Matt Payne has extended his lead in the Supercars championship with a win and a second place in the two races at Wanneroo Raceway in Perth.
The Grove Racing Ford driver started from pole position in both 50-lap races and except for a slow start to the opening race, the New Zealander made no mistakes worth mentioning, to take the win.
Even a safety car in race one, which erased a lead of nearly five seconds, did not worry Payne, who quickly re-established his advantage.
In the second race he solved his temporary starting woes but following his pitstop was baulked by a car that was about to enter the pitlane.
In a flash Broc Feeney, who had been closing in on the leader after his own stop, bolted into the lead in the Triple Eight Ford, and hung on to end a seven-race winless streak by 1.58s.
“It’s probably more of a relief, to be honest,” said Feeney, who finished seventh in the opening race, after a difficult qualifying.
“We still have a fair bit of work to do. In the first stint Matt disappeared into the distance but he came back to me in the second stint. I lit into wheelspin [at the start] and I had a bit of an issue in the first stint. My guys are second to none in the pitlane and they put me back into it.”
Payne had no qualms about Feeney’s opportunistic overtake.
“I would have done the same thing,” he said. “We just got caught out with lapped traffic at absolutely the wrong time. I don’t think there is anything I would have done.
“I was just understeering too much. I was getting frustrated, to lose it like that was unfortunate.”
Third place in the second race went to Payne’s Grove team-mate, Kai Allen. He was involved in a major battle in the opening race when, under pressure from the Team 18 Chevrolet of Anton De Pasquale, Allen was attacking Kostecki at Turn 1 and the result was Kostecki beached, which triggered the safety car with 11 laps remaining. That left the 2023 champion last and Allen sixth, with the stewards opting for no further action after investigation in the clash post-race.
“I had a bad start and Broc had a shocker too,” Allen said after Race 2.
“For a while there… I was really happy after that. The car was a good one. We are missing a bit, Broc did a good job and that team did a really good job with their stops.”
In the second race Kostecki had to come through the field and over the closing laps fought an epic battle with his former team-mate, Will Brown. The Triple Eight Ford driver started from 11th to Kostecki’s seventh but made strong early ground, and completed a solid day for Triple Eight.
It was a good Saturday for the Walkinshaw TWG Toyotas. Ryan Wood was second in the first race, even if Payne had the speed to have him covered, but he did not have the same speed in the second race, finishing eighth.
Team-mate Chaz Mostert had two solid races, and looked to be in contention for a podium finish in the opening race, in spite of starting outside the top 10. His Toyota showed good race pace and the team’s decision to change only two tyres in the single pitstop got him up to third, until he lost ground to ‘four-tyre’ cars in the closing laps. In the second race he made an early stop and thereafter, drove a lonely race to fourth.
The other notable performances came from De Pasquale, who was the best Chevrolet driver in both races, taking third in race one and 11th in the second race. De Pasquale had great pace in the second half of the opening race on Dunlop’s soft tyre but on the super soft in the afternoon could not repeat the performance.
The Supercars teams and drivers have one more race in Perth on Sunday afternoon.
