Grove has been involved in motorsport for a long time and has always had an eye for talent. The Australian has invested in a fair few New Zealanders over the years, the most recent being Matthew Payne.
"We talk to a lot of people and it was Earl Bamber, who we are quite close with, and we've been involved with Scotty [McLaughlin] for 10 years now. Earl said the kid was quite good because he's running with Earl Bamber Motorsport [Porsche].
"We're also doing the Carrera Cup with him and I started looking at some of his data. I also started looking at his videos and saw how smooth he is with his hands and how controlled he is in the car.
"You could tell early on how much time he had in the car. A lot of kids are over-driving the car and just hanging on trying to get around the circuit. Matty has plenty of time, so that means he has time to mentally process what's going on with the car and race strategy.
"I thought he was highly talented and we thought we'd give him a test in our Super2 and Supercar car. We put it him and looked at his data and knew we had someone pretty special."
Payne didn't have the best race results in his debut in Super2 last weekend — he stalled in race one and crashed in a wet race two — but Grove isn't too bothered about that. He's more interested in what Payne has the potential to become.
Raw speed comes naturally and cannot be taught. It's easier to slow someone down and teach them race craft than it is to try to make someone go faster.
"The really pleasing thing was when he qualified on the front row and he also topped the co-driver session as well. That was really exciting for us," Grove said.
"He made a tiny error at the start, bogging the car down. In the wet race the next day he tried to pull out of the spray and went extreme right onto the drag strip, and with all the rubber on the track, the car just shot straight ahead into the tyre barriers.
"He'll learn. He's got the race pace and race craft and he's just got to learn the finer points."
Supercars teams have this weekend off after four consecutive race weekends at Sydney Motorsport Park. Being able to take a deep breath and spend some quality time on getting cars ready for the biggest race of the year, the Bathurst 1000, is a bit of a Godsend for teams who have not been able to make it back to their home workshops for over a month.
"It was pretty full on to be doing so many weekends in a row. We're frantically getting the cars ready for Bathurst now," said Grove.
"The only advantage we had is that we knew before we left so loaded the trucks up an enormous load of parts. Certainly a bit going on.
"The plan for Bathurst with Matty is to build during practice. Day one practice we'll aim for 75 per cent, second practice we'll try and bring him up to 85 per cent and qualifying will obviously be 100 per cent.
"We've just got to make sure we build towards the race."
