Supercars Sandown: Payne Sunday win sets up title challenge

Matt Payne has taken his sixth Supercars win of the season and cemented his points lead with an all-the-way – but in the end, narrow – win at Sandown Park in Melbourne.

Payne put his Kelly Racing Ford Mustang on pole for the second day in a row and beat Anton De Pasquale, who started alongside in the Team 18 Chevrolet Camaro, to the first corner. From there, Payne had the pace to build a gap and he did, until ‘ADP’ cleared traffic and closed over the final laps.

The Camaro had the speed and started the final lap under a second behind, and with Payne facing even more traffic ahead. The gap closed, and Payne held on, to take the victory by 0.7s.

As well as De Pasquale drove, second was never going to be enough for him to qualify as a finalist. Under Supercars’ Finals system, the only way he could make that move was to win the race, after Brodie Kostecki’s Saturday win effectively meant he, Payne and only two other drivers could move forward.

“That was so stressful, it couldn’t tell you,” Payne smiled after his first win since August.

“I saw the train of cars, and I managed to get through some of them. We didn’t have much left at the end, but I managed to get home by the skin of my teeth

We had the car speed this weekend, it was probably a little bit better than yesterday. We found ourselves a bit this weekend, we hit all our marks.”

Photo by: EDGE

Understandably De Pasquale was a disappointed runner-up.

“I gave it everything, I was trying to hunt him down,” he said.

“He got a little bit of a better one [start] and he wasn’t degging [tyre degrading] as much as I hoped he would.”

Ironically, in a season in which De Pasquale has often looking like Chevrolet’s only contender, another Camaro was third. Just two weekends after he moved to the Team Sydney after leaving Erebus Motorsport, Cooper Murray started third and that is where he finished, after a drive that was unobtrusive because it lacked anything that looked like an error.

“I am very emotional at the moment,” he grinned after the first top-three result of his career.

“Second round with this team and we are on the podium. On to bigger and bigger things.

“I always knew I had the belief in my own ability. Thank you to everyone at PremiAir Racing for giving me the opportunity. I got off the [start] and it was a steady race from there, probably one of the easiest races I have had in the Main Game.”

Broc Feeney took fourth in his Triple Eight Ford, thereby ensuring that he is one of the four Finalists, on what was a tricky weekend for the team. Will Brown started the weekend in Finals contention but his hopes were doomed before the race started. He failed to advance from the first phase of Qualifying by 0.04s and started the race from 19th, from where only freakish circumstances would have placed him in contention to win. No such events came; by the flag he was an impressive sixth, just 12 seconds behind teammate Feeney, but it was win-or-bust for the former champion.

Photo by: EDGE

De Pasquale’s second place dictated that the three highest in points advance to Adelaide – and that meant that Chaz Mostert was the man who made the cut. From the start he had a job to do, after missing out on the Top 10 Shootout by 0.02s, and from 11th on the grid, needed to move through the field quickly. At one point he was seventh on the road, with the other four Toyotas in the field running in a line on his tail...

He made a number of crucial passes on the way to the result, particularly to second fifth ahead of Thomas Randle (Tickford Ford). He had the better of the results for the team, with teammate Cam Waters starting from 19th and struggling in the race. A 15th finish eliminated him from Finals contention.

Brodie Kostecki had a difficult Sunday. Having secured his spot in the Final Four with Saturday’s victory, he scored an own goal – actually, a drive-through penalty – for turning his engine off on the lap to the grid, in breach of the regulations. That dropped him from fourth on the road to 23rd and by the end of the race he was 10th.

The results mean that three of the four drivers in contention – Payne, Feeney and Kostecki – will try to give Ford a second consecutive Drivers’ title, against a sole Toyota driven by Mostert, the man who delivered that title a year ago.

Three races await the teams, drivers and fans – including a Friday evening race for the first time – on the streets of Adelaide on 27-29 November.