That’s the takeout from Townsville for the Penrite-backed team, which continued its climb up the Supercars ladder by displacing Tickford Racing for second in the teams’ standings.

Having finished fourth in the championship last year, Grove has been the big improver in 2025 as Matt Payne establishes himself as a star and rookie Kai Allen finds his feet.

Speed and strategic nous have been strengths, but the team let itself down in pit lane on Sunday as both drivers lost time with slow refuelling – an issue that also impacted Payne in Perth.

Payne and Allen ended Townsville’s Sunday race fifth and 10th respectively, with the former having run second to eventual winner – Triple Eight’s Broc Feeney – before the troubled first stop.

“I think there was just a bit of air inside when we put the fuel in and one of the guns didn’t work,” team owner Stephen Grove told Supercars Trackside of the Townsville trouble.

“So, it’s just trying to manage that process, what do we do, should we have left the tyre on, should we use the other pit stop guy to change? We’ll work on that.

“The good thing is now, it’s the finer things. We’ve got car speed, the drivers are up and about, the team’s engineering really well…

“We were a little bit off on car speed [in Townsville] but it’s the little things that will make the difference and [Triple Eight] do the little things really well.

“So once we start doing the little things well we’ll be able to challenge them.”

The man responsible for sorting out those ‘little things’ is team principal David Cauchi, who was poached from Triple Eight ahead of the 2022 season to lead Grove Racing to the front.

“We had a couple of things go on that we really need to understand,” Cauchi said of the pit stops on the Cool Down Lap podcast.

“They’re a crucial part of this kind of racing, so we’ve got to work through a few things.

“There’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of people, a lot of human elements, a lot of equipment, so everyone has to buy into it, but then there also needs to be some leadership to work through all the details.”

As for displacing Tickford in the Supercars pit lane for the next round at Queensland Raceway, he added: “We’ll have to evict them and jump in there for QR.

“The aim is to maintain that. The other guys are a little bit far ahead at the moment, but still the enduro season to go, so a lot of points can be won or lost there as well.”

Triple Eight’s impressive 3298-point championship tally has it 970 ahead of Grove in the teams’ standings, while 1273 points separate second from last.

Payne and Allen are third and 12th in the drivers’ championship respectively with three rounds remaining before the Finals cut-off.