{"id":326654,"date":"2025-12-04T07:05:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T07:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/326654\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T07:05:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T07:05:18","slug":"paynes-sandown-reflection-after-triumphant-adelaide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/326654\/","title":{"rendered":"Payne\u2019s Sandown reflection after triumphant Adelaide"},"content":{"rendered":"

FOR the second time in three years, Matt Payne<\/a> enters the Supercars off-season after pocketing the final race win on offer.<\/p>\n

Payne\u2019s commanding victory in the Sunday leg of the Adelaide Grand Final opened a can of \u2018what if\u2019-flavoured worms, given a single moment at Sandown bundled him out of the title fight.<\/p>\n

Often Broc Feeney<\/a>\u2019s nearest threat through the regular season, the Kiwi collected some major silverware in 2025 including the Jason Richards<\/a> Memorial Trophy and the Peter Brock<\/a> Trophy after winning a memorable Bathurst 1000 with Garth Tander<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019ll 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<\/a> in the second Sandown semi-final race \u2013 and losing out.<\/p>\n

Instead, it was Payne\u2019s rookie teammate Kai Allen<\/a> who proceeded to the championship decider.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, of course there\u2019s always a part of me that\u2019s going to wish I did something different,\u201d the #19 Penrite Mustang driver confessed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when you\u2019re in the moment and you\u2019re racing, that\u2019s all you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike Jamie (Whincup, Triple Eight managing director) said, we sign up for this \u2013 it\u2019s on the waiver before you join the sport. You\u2019re going to have bad days and you\u2019re going to have really good ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like even this year, we\u2019ve had some really, really ripper days and we haven\u2019t had many bad ones, and unfortunately on Sunday at Sandown it cost us our year and our shot at the championship\u2026 it just wasn\u2019t our year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Pic: Supplied\/Jack Martin<\/p>\n

Payne hopes 2026 will be his year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to work really hard towards next year to make sure that we iron out some of the stuff that we had this year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve built really well this year and made a huge step forward in having two really fast cars with Kai, so we\u2019re going to work really hard and try to come back even stronger next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grove Racing finished the season as Ford\u2019s top representative in the Supercars teams\u2019 championship for the first time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FOR the second time in three years, Matt Payne enters the Supercars off-season after pocketing the final race…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-326654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}