Grove Racing driver Richie Stanaway has been ruled out of the penultimate race of the Supercars season with concussion following a high-speed crash at the Adelaide 500.
Stanaway clipped the apex of the street circuit’s notorious turn eight and smashed into the opposite concrete wall during qualifying on Friday.
Onboard monitors clocked a G-force of 52 from the heavy side-on collision.
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The session was abandoned early after Cam Hill and David Reynolds bizarrely replicated the same crash on the same corner seconds later, damaging the concrete barrier.
Stanaway’s car was the least damaged of the three but suffered the highest G-force, and following a medical exam on Saturday was pulled off the grid ahead of race 23.
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Brenton Grove, director of operations at Grove Racing, said Stanaway exhibited delayed concussion systems following the shunt.
“It was completely side-on so it’s really not good for the brain,” Grove said.
“Richie mentioned that he had some headaches and some symptoms that we were a little bit worried about so we’ve sent him straight after practice this morning to the medical centre to get checked and he hasn’t quite been cleared.
“We’ll do everything we can to get him back in the car tomorrow but this track is brutal, there’s a lot of concrete walls and we can’t be putting a driver at risk of getting worse conditions or having any sort of long term injury.”
Turn eight has caused dozens of crashes over the years and infamously claimed the life of Ashley Cooper in 2008 when he crashed into the concrete barrier at an estimated speed of over 200km/h.
Stanaway’s exit prompted last-minute drama for the Groves.
The team’s Bathurst 1000 co-driver Garth Tander confirmed on Channel 7’s pre-race coverage that he was initially asked to fill in, but the champion had none of his gear with him.
Grove Racing then announced rising star Kai Allen had been called up to drive the No.26 Mustang hours after he finished seventh in the opening Super2 race of the weekend.
But racing regulations precluded Allen, who will replace Stanaway in the Grove garage in 2025, from participating in the second-tier category and Supercars in the same weekend.
After Stanaway, Tander and Allen, the Groves confirmed fourth choice was locked in —Dale Wood, who was Stanaway’s co-driver at the Bathurst 1000 and who had raced earlier in the day in the Porsche Cup support category.
“It was pretty tough so I don’t know how he’s going to do it but he’s ice bathed and he’s ready to go,” Grove said.
Stanaway sits 16th on the championship standings with 1447 points and no race wins.
He qualified in 11th spot despite the crash but Wood will be required to start from the pit lane.
– with 7NEWS