FOR the second time in three years, Matt Payne enters the Supercars off-season after pocketing the final race win on offer.
Payne’s commanding victory in the Sunday leg of the Adelaide Grand Final opened a can of ‘what if’-flavoured worms, given a single moment at Sandown bundled him out of the title fight.
Often Broc Feeney’s nearest threat through the regular season, the Kiwi collected some major silverware in 2025 including the Jason Richards Memorial Trophy and the Peter Brock Trophy after winning a memorable Bathurst 1000 with Garth Tander.
But there’ll forever be a question mark as to whether he could have added more, having been in the box seat for a grand final ticket before engaging with a fired-up Cam Waters in the second Sandown semi-final race – and losing out.
Instead, it was Payne’s rookie teammate Kai Allen who proceeded to the championship decider.
“Yeah, of course there’s always a part of me that’s going to wish I did something different,” the #19 Penrite Mustang driver confessed.
“But when you’re in the moment and you’re racing, that’s all you’re doing.
“Like Jamie (Whincup, Triple Eight managing director) said, we sign up for this – it’s on the waiver before you join the sport. You’re going to have bad days and you’re going to have really good ones.
“I feel like even this year, we’ve had some really, really ripper days and we haven’t had many bad ones, and unfortunately on Sunday at Sandown it cost us our year and our shot at the championship… it just wasn’t our year.”
Pic: Supplied/Jack Martin
Payne hopes 2026 will be his year.
“We’re going to work really hard towards next year to make sure that we iron out some of the stuff that we had this year,” he said.
“We’ve built really well this year and made a huge step forward in having two really fast cars with Kai, so we’re going to work really hard and try to come back even stronger next year.”
Grove Racing finished the season as Ford’s top representative in the Supercars teams’ championship for the first time.