Matt Payne won the Bosch Power Tools Perth Super 440 finale on Sunday with a left-rear tyre hanging more than an inch off the bead, holding off a charging Broc Feeney by 1.2 seconds to take a 118-point championship lead into the Repco Sprint Cup decider at Ipswich.
The Penrite Racing driver should not have finished the race, let alone won it. The damage came from the move that decided the afternoon.
Feeney had controlled the opening half from pole at Motormall Wanneroo Raceway, having beaten Cam Waters off the front row into the first corner. Payne cleared Waters for second on lap 14 at the exit of Turn 6 and set about a 1.8-second deficit, but Triple Eight covered him at the first stops, pitting on lap 30 and emerging four seconds clear once Payne's longer first stint played out on lap 35.
Penrite's answer came in the middle stint. Payne cut the gap to three tenths by lap 48, then switched tactics — having gone for the overcut at the first stop, he pulled the undercut on lap 51. Feeney responded the next time by and rejoined directly in front. Payne went down the inside at Turn 3, made contact with the #88 Ford and took the lead.
"Oh my god, I don't even know where to start. Oh man," Payne said afterwards. "I knew Broc was going to be quick, and I knew that we were going to run the strategy we did to try and undercut him at that point."
"I've just ever so slightly squeaked, we banged wheels, and something just felt off. The car was just so loose, it was so hard to drive, up until that point it was mega."
Payne nursed it home by changing his corner entries: "I just had to make sure to bring the entries back, not try and carry too much speed."
Feeney's right rear had also come off the bead, though he was unaware of it. "It's half popped the tyre off the rim there," Feeney said. "I couldn't feel that when I was out there, to be honest." He said he was gutted not to win, but had no complaint about the pass.
Payne was quick to return the compliment. "Credit to Broc, he raced me really clean, even when he bumped me and I lost it, he readdressed which was really cool. And he wasn't hitting me too much which was really cool as well, so big respect to him."
Behind them, Team 18 strategy vaulted Anton De Pasquale to third ahead of Waters, while Kai Allen recovered from 23rd on the grid to finish fifth. Brodie Kostecki's race unravelled with a poor fuel flow at his first stop, forcing a third visit to the lane on lap 71 simply to reach the flag. Chaz Mostert took sixth ahead of Aaron Cameron, Jayden Ojeda, David Reynolds and Thomas Randle.
Two Finals contenders went the other way. Ryan Wood never started, pulling his #2 Toyota in after the formation lap with a suspected airbox issue — his third significant mechanical failure of the season. Will Brown, who started 19th, collected a 15-second penalty for pushing Rylan Gray through the Turn 6 sand trap on the opening lap, then traded contact with Allen at Turns 1 and 2.
Payne, Feeney and Waters now settle the Sprint Cup — and the first guaranteed Supercars Finals berth — at the Century Batteries Ipswich Super 440 on August 21-23. Waters, who marked his 150th Supercars round in Perth, is not treating the milestone as a career marker.
"Labels me as one of the older guys in the field but I'm still feeling pretty good and like I'm still one of the young ones," the Tickford driver said.
Payne set the target before the weekend began. "Our goal is to try and win the Sprint Cup... that's our focus at the moment," he said. "The next two tracks are tough, they're pretty unorthodox tracks I would say on the calendar. We're going to have to work pretty hard to make sure we stay strong and roll out well and can fight for wins."
One down. One to go.
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