Matt Payne scored a second, dominant win of the Ruapuna Park Supercars weekend, to give Ford a sweep of all four races on New Zealand’s South Island.
After taking pole position for the second time, Payne won the start and, after an early safety car, just drove away from the field. To add to the party that Grove Racing will have on the way back to its Melbourne base, Kai Allen came through to second, the team strategising his forward march to give it its first-ever 1-2 result.
“I knew we were going to have a good car today,” Payne said said. “In qualifying, we had a margin every time. That was a perfect race for us, there were a couple of safety cars but we were damn fast. I knew what I had to do, we executed and it was perfect. We fought as hard as we could and we gave it our best shot.”
After helping the team to its first 1-2 finish, Allen was a satisfied man.
“I made a good start, and Will [Brown] was making my life pretty hard,” he said.
“Matty was in another league again today. Pumped for the team, our first 1-2, I just have to work out how to be as fast as Matty. A lot of preparation went into this round, Matty and I worked hard on learning the track as best as we could.”
Third place went to Broc Feeney. He worked his way past Triple Eight team-mate Will Brown in the middle stint of the race, but his Ford lacked the outright pace of the Grove versions, and he took home as many points as he could.
Matt Payne, Grove Racing
Photo by: Mark Horsburgh, Edge Photographics
The incident late in the race meant that Feeney not only takes home the Jason Richards Trophy, but elevates him to the championship points lead.
“That was a roller coaster of a race,” he said. “I had no radio for the whole race, and I was trying to do the maths in my head. I thought it must be very close, I only heard like 10 words [on the radio] during the race. After the pit stops it was alright.”
Chaz Mostert drove a strong race to make it to what was looking like P4. He missed making it into the Top Ten Shoot Out by 0.01s but made a good start, before an incident with Brodie Kostecki on the penultimate lap.
Mostert and Kostecki bumped doors and they fought for fourth, the Dick Johnson Racing driver and Triple’s Eight’s Will brown both spearing off the circuit at speed. Brown recovered, Kostecki retired, and Mostert was hit with a 30-second penalty, dropping him to 17th – ironically, one spot ahead of Kostecki.
James Golding backed up his podium finish on Saturday with fourth place, picking up positions in the late-race melee, while fifth was a great result for Cam Waters. His Tickford Ford refused to fire for the formation lap and he had to start dead last. From there, he motored through the field, picking off car after car until he cracked the top 10 mid-race.
But he kept going and when incidents happened in front of him, he seized the result, in spite of an apparent loss of his trademark qualifying speed.
Behind Brown, Jack Le Brocq was the best of the Chevrolet Camaro drivers, taking his Matt Stone Racing car to seventh, after a battle with Andre Heimgarter’s Brad Jones Racing Toyota.
Ryan Wood had a tough Sunday. With seven laps to go the 22-year-old from Wellington was seventh, and placed to take home the Jason Richards Trophy, which would have been the sixth time a NZ driver had lifted the trophy since its inception in 2013. But his Walkinshaw TWG suffered an engine failure, ending his race and prompting a second Safety Car.
As a result of the late-race dramas Feeney retakes the championship points lead from Kostecki. Feeney has 925 points, with Kostecki on 902 and Payne on 879. Waters is fourth on 787, from Allen (728) and Wood (726).
The next round of the championship will take place at Symmons Plains, near Launceston in Tasmania, on 22-24 May.
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