Payne Holds Off De Pasquale by Seven-Tenths at Sandown to Seal His Place in Supercars' Final Four

For 79 laps at Sandown Park, Matt Payne did everything right — until the final few laps, when everything nearly came undone. That is exactly what made the win so satisfying.

Payne, driving the Grove Racing Ford Mustang, took his sixth Supercars win of the season on Sunday, beating Anton De Pasquale's Team 18 Chevrolet Camaro by 0.7382 seconds in the second race of the Penrite Oil Sandown 500. The victory, his first since August, also locked him in as the top seed for the four-driver championship showdown in Adelaide later this month.

Payne put his Mustang on pole for the second day in a row and beat De Pasquale to the first corner, then built a gap and managed his tyres. But De Pasquale, with nothing to lose, refused to go away — he cleared the traffic, found speed in his Camaro, and by the final lap was under a second behind, with Payne facing a train of slower cars ahead of him.

"That was so stressful, it couldn't tell you," Payne said afterwards, smiling through the relief. "I saw the train of cars, and I managed to get through some of them. We didn't have much left at the end, but I managed to get home by the skin of my teeth. We had the car speed this weekend, it was probably a little bit better than yesterday. We found ourselves a bit this weekend, we hit all our marks."

De Pasquale knew how close he had come. "I gave it everything, I was trying to hunt him down," he said. "He got a little bit of a better one [start] and he wasn't degging [tyre degrading] as much as I hoped he would." Second place was a fine drive, but it was never going to be enough. Under Supercars' Finals system, after Brodie Kostecki's win on Saturday, the only way De Pasquale could reach the title decider was to win on Sunday. He missed out by seven-tenths of a second, and his championship is over.

Behind them, Cooper Murray delivered the feel-good story of the day. Just two weekends after moving to PremiAir Racing from Erebus Motorsport, the young Australian started third and finished third — the first podium of his Supercars career, 7.3303 seconds behind Payne. "I am very emotional at the moment," he said. "Second round with this team and we are on the podium. On to bigger and bigger things."

The result settled the championship picture. Payne, Kostecki, Broc Feeney and Chaz Mostert will fight for the title in Adelaide on November 27-29, with three races deciding the champion. Feeney took fourth on Sunday to confirm his place, while Mostert fought through from 11th on the grid to fifth, doing enough to make the cut as the only Toyota in the final four.

Will Brown failed to advance from the first phase of qualifying by 0.04 seconds, started 19th, and drove brilliantly to sixth — but it was win-or-bust for the former champion, and no miracle came. Cam Waters, starting 19th himself, could manage only 15th. And Kostecki, already through after Saturday's win, took a drive-through penalty for switching his engine off on the lap to the grid, dropping from fourth to 23rd before recovering to tenth.

Three of the four finalists will try to give Ford a second consecutive drivers' title, against Mostert — the man who delivered that title for Toyota a year ago. Payne goes to Adelaide with the points lead and, after Sunday's white-knuckle finish, the knowledge that he can hold his nerve when a rival is filling his mirrors.