A move to Team 18 has long been tabled by General Motors to bolster its Supercars talent pool.
After months of speculation, the young New Zealander finally committed himself to Grove Racing through 2027 to the end of his contract.
“Internally, I think nothing has changed,” said Grove on Seven’s Supercars Preview Show.
“We knew where we were and everybody has been on the same page.
“Hopefully, from a media and external perspective, it kind of quietens down a little bit, but nothing has changed for us.
“We’re here to win races, we have two fantastic drivers we’ve signed for a long time because we want them driving our cars.
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“Matt’s statement reiterated that and we’re excited to go to Townsville, which has been a pretty good hunting ground for us in the past and hopefully back up what we did in Darwin.”
Signing with General Motors and Team 18 seems an inevitability, in any case.
Grove said that while he is not looking too far into the future, the team is already considering overseas options and local talent in the event that Payne does depart.
The team has not shied away from international drivers. It employed the services of Porsche ace Kevin Estre in 2023 and has connections to other drivers by way of its Bathurst 12 Hour programs.
“I think it’s going to be challenging for Matt to go. We’re not focused yet on who the next driver is,” said Grove.
“Our job is to try to win races and championships with Matt.
“However, we would be silly not to have contingency plans, and we have multiple people on the spectrum from Super2 drivers to people overseas to people within the sport.
“We also are lucky we have two of the fastest cars and we have a lot of people that want to drive for our team.
“There’s definitely no shortage of people that have reached out if there was a seat available, but we have the two drivers we want in the car and we want to win championships.”
Overseas opportunities have been offered to Payne by GM.
One of those – a NASCAR Cup Series cameo at Sonoma with Richard Childress Racing – nearly materialised this year until it was blocked by Grove Racing.
The door may also open to sports car racing. GM has entries in the FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA SportsCar Championship by way of Cadillac.
Grove said that racing overseas was a point of interest when Payne came onboard with the Supercars squad.
“Obviously it (General Motors’ approach) happened last year. We saw it come out in the media that it was looking like Matt was wanting to go and do something different,” said Grove.
“That was always a discussion for us since we signed Matt, when he first started with us, that he has ambitions to go overseas.
“There was no fixed timeline on that and it seems like through a few people in the background this has started to build momentum.
“Our relationship with Matt has been great the whole time. Obviously GM are trying to fix some challenges they have and Team 18 are the same.
“I understand why it’s happening, people are trying to take a very strong driver to bolster their team.
“We obviously had Shippy (Grant McPherson) get poached [by] GM as well. We understand the business of motorsport, but we’ve also been around a while.
“We have very good contracts, we understand what we’re doing, and Matt needs to see out his agreement.
“It’s nice that that’s out in the public as well, but I don’t see the story going or this narrative stopping for the rest of his term with us.”
Payne heads to the NTI Townsville 500 second in the Supercars drivers’ championship just 15 points behind Triple Eight’s Broc Feeney.
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