How Payne is dealing with Shootout pressure

Rookie Matt Payne is taking a simple approach to the Top 10 Shootouts in which he is becoming an increasingly familiar face.

The Penrite Racing driver has made the one-lap dash on six of the last seven occasions, including today’s at the Vailo Adelaide 500.

For Payne, the task in the shootouts is simply about repetition of his provisional qualifying laps.

“Obviously, the shootout is pretty nerve-racking, just trying to get the one lap done,” said the 21-year-old.

“But, I try and say to myself, you know, if I can do it two or three times in qualifying, I’m sure I can do it with just the one [lap] for the shootout.

“We’ve had some good results lately in the shootout – we’ve been able to sort of back up our qualifying performance – and hopefully [today] we can do the same.”

Payne qualified on the front row for the opening race of the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 weekend before Grove Racing team-mate David Reynolds did likewise in the latter and converted it into victory.

Both are into today’s shootout with Reynolds having set the second-fastest provisional qualifying time and Payne being 0.0169s slower in third spot.

After a mid-season slump, Grove tested in the lead-up to the year’s earlier visit to South Australia, at The Bend in August.

It has shown promising pace ever since, while Payne enjoyed his final rookie test day of the year last week.

“There’s no hiding; we struggled through the middle part of the year,” he recalled regarding Grove’s 2023 campaign.

“Probably, there were some set-up changes that we had on the car that we probably thought were better that we should have taken off earlier.

“Definitely, the rookie days this year helped, for sure; we found some stuff when we went up to Winton and tested.

“But yeah, we just seem to have gotten a little bit more of an understanding of the car, this second half of the year, and we’ve definitely put it to good news use; that knowledge. It seems to have some really strong results.

“Still, qualifying speed’s been really good for me in the back half of the year but, in racing, I think I’ve still got some work to do on race pace.

“So, we’ll, this weekend, what I can do.”

Practice 3 starts at 09:45 local time/AEDT.