This weekend’s Townsville 500 is imbued with more importance than your average Supercars round.
The penultimate round of the Sprint Cup could see the winner of the year’s first piece of minor silverware awarded to Broc Feeney if the title leader dominates and things go his way.
And while that could prove important to the championship outcome, the all-important finals are looming just on the horizon.
Kayo Sports is the home of Supercars | Watch every race of the 2025 Repco Supercars Championship LIVE & ad-break free during racing. New to Kayo? Get your first month for just $1. Limited time offer.
Points will be of only so much significant come the knockout rounds, but form will pay greater dividends.
That’s particularly true for form around street circuits.
Townsville’s Reid Park is the first true street track of the year. It’s also the last street track before the Gold Coast, the first weekend of the finals, and the championship-deciding grand final in Adelaide.
If two of the three finals will be raced on public roads, it stands to reason that honing a car to ride the kerbs well, to handle bumps and surface changes, to give the driver confidence to sidle up to the walls, will be at a championship advantage.
“It’s the first point of data you can get for the end of the year to see who’s really going to have the mettle,” Matt Payne tells Fox Sports.
“Townsville has always been a pretty challenging circuit just because it is a little bit of a hybrid — half-street, half-permanent. Obviously there are a lot of kerbs around here as well, so the car has to be quite compliant.
“That’s definitely all challenging to balance that and get that right, but our cars historically have been really strong on street tracks.
“Even last year we always seemed to come on at the end of the year especially — Gold Coast and Adelaide have been pretty good for us. In Townsville last year we were really strong in the race.”
Though Payne cautions against reading too much into the specific results as a forecast for finals performance.
“It’s completely different layouts and surfaces and everything on each street track,” he said. “It’s still hard to tell, really.”
Red Bull sack Horner as team pricipal | 00:50
But it nonetheless bodes well for Payne, who in just his third campaign is on a trajectory to the big dance in Adelaide.
He’s third on the title table 197 points behind leader Feeney and only 14 points behind reigning champion Will Brown, and his form has been improving the deeper he gets into the season.
It took him until the eighth race of the year to step onto the podium — victory in New Zealand, propelling him to Taupō round victory — but he’s been a mainstay ever since, stepping onto the rostrum at least once at every weekend.
Since Taupō he’s been the sport’s second highest scoring driver, just 97 points behind Feeney.
“I think for us the biggest improvement has been our consistency,” he says. “The last three rounds have been all tracks that we ultimately had our worst weekends at last year, and if you would have asked me last year, I would have been grateful that we’re at Townsville because it’s the first track we rolled out at and we capable of winning.
“Now all of these tracks that we’ve struggled at we’ve got a pretty good car.”
Being constantly in the ballpark means the team is also more often able to get the car in its sweet spot on any given weekend.
“You’ve seen now quite good evidence that if someone can get it right on a weekend and really nail the set-up, they are a lot faster,” he says.
“It’s like we saw with Cam [Waters] in the first round, Triple Eight at the Australian Grand Prix, us in New Zealand, Broc at Darwin, the WAU guys at Perth and again T8 at Tasmania as well.
“When you do get the car right, you are a step above the rest, which ultimately leads to a big pointscoring weekend.
“I think for us we can get it right sometimes, but the good thing for us is our bad days are starting to become much more bearable results — for us a bad day now is not being inside the top five. We certainly know that we’re a winning team now.”
Lando hurt while trying to celebrate | 00:30
Payne has finished outside the top 10 just twice this year and hasn’t finished outside the top eight since Saturday in Tasmania, nine races ago.
But still a stubborn margin remains to the Triple Eight drivers and to Feeney in particular.
After having closed his title deficit to 75 points after Tasmania, Feeney’s dominant run of five wins from the last five have seen him wedge open the gap again even as Payne has been a regular podium-getter.
“For us it’s probably qualifying speed,” Payne explains. “We just haven’t looked like we were capable of getting a pole since probably New Zealand.
“In Perth we were close, in Darwin we were close again but we’ve always been frightening the top five; the top three seem to have a little bit more speed.
“That’s definitely been putting us a little bit on the back foot.”
The stats bear it out.
Despite running a clear third and gunning for second on the title table, he’s regularly outqualified by drivers beneath him in the championship.
Average gap to pole
1. Broc Feeney: 0.164 seconds
2. Brodie Kostecki: 0.291 seconds
3. Cam Waters: 0.297 seconds
4. Matt Payne: 0.307 seconds
5. Will Brown: 0.324 seconds
Averaging each team’s gap to the every weekend’s fastest lap demonstrates the tight battle with Tickford and DJR in particular.
Average gap to pole per round
1. Triple Eight: 0.130 seconds
2. Tickford: 0.228 seconds
3. Grove: 0.259 seconds
3. Dick Johnson Racing: 0.263 seconds
5. Walkinshaw Andretti United: 0.318 seconds
“Our race car has always been really strong — that’s been the real saviour for us, and being able to drive forward from where we qualify has definitely yielded us the results,” Payne continues.
“The strategies have been really good as well just with the team and communication and everything.
“But qualifying is definitely something that we’re working on, and I think it’s the right thing to focus on.”
Hulkenberg finally ends record drought | 01:45
‘IMPORTANT TO TRY AND BEAT THEM’
The qualifying challenge will be more acute in Townsville, where a revised format will see drivers qualify and race on Friday followed by dual top-10 shootouts on both Saturday and Sunday.
The schedule means there’ll be just 130 minutes between the end of practice and the start of qualifying.
Nailing the set-up as quickly as possible — ideally rolling out of the truck ready to go — will pay big dividends, while those who miss the mark could suffer through the whole weekend.
“It’s challenging for everyone,” Payne says. “It’s a long weekend, especially these three-day race weekends, so you’ve just got to manage that right, but I think we’ve seen some of the best racing that Supercars has seen for a very long time at the moment.
“I feel like we’re just edging into a bit of a golden period of it, especially with these new cars.
“I’ve watched a lot of the racing back, and it’s just been plainly good to watch. It’s entertaining, the racing is close, and I think this Friday race is always a bit challenging because it is shorter and there’s not as many points on offer.
“It goes by quick, but it can easily turn your weekend upside down if you don’t roll out strong on Friday and it’s hard to turn that around in one day.”
But there’s a second reason for the frontrunning teams like Grove to get their head around the format.
It’s the same broad weekend configuration that’ll be used at the Adelaide Grand Final — critical preparation, then, for the championship run-in.
10s pen costs Piastri victory in England | 03:15
But for Payne the finals remain on the horizon. Feeney is still up the road both on the title table and in terms of pure pace, and shrinking that gap is a crucial goal for Grove as the season approaches its business end.
“I’m still certainly thinking about points,” he says. “There are still two rounds to go of the Sprint Cup and then we’ve still got two enduros.
“It’s always important to be scoring points, because that means you’re constantly consolidating where you are.
“But for sure Broc’s definitely on a bit of a roll at the moment. I think he’s going to be pretty hard to stop.
“It’s going to be important to try and beat them. We’re obviously pretty close to Will [Brown] at the moment, so it’d be nice to have a few good results here and jump into second.”
And there’s an extra bit of motivation for Grove to overcome the Triple Eight challenge this year.
Payne is the best-placed Ford driver on the title table, but next year T8 will trade in its Camaro cars for the Mustang.
Grove, having built itself into a powerful position in recent years, will face its biggest challenge yet, and any momentum generated this year could be crucial to taking the fight to Triple Eight in equal machinery.
“I think it’s going to be really exciting,” Payne says. “I think everyone here is really pumped just to really have a shootout between probably four of the Ford teams in terms of who’s going to do the best job.
“We’re all on the same equipment, and I think there’s still a lot of differences between each of the cars and the way they produce speed and a lot of the philosophy. It’s certainly going to be cool.
“I’m really excited for the opportunity to go up against those guys — not to say that we aren’t challenging them at the moment, but they certainly have probably got a little bit of margin when they do get it right. They’re certainly tough to beat.
“It’s going to be cool next year being all in the same gear, same everything, and just to just to really knuckle down and see who’s going to be best.”