Payne expects Feeney to ‘come out swinging’ in Sprint Cup fight

The Grove Racing star leads Feeney by 92 points with two rounds of the Sprint Cup remaining across Wanneroo this weekend and Ipswich next month.

Feeney had held a 90 point advantage before tough recent rounds for the Triple Eight team at Darwin and Townsville flipped the script.

“We’ve seen it I don’t know how many times, they’ve had a couple of bad races and then they come out swinging even harder,” Payne said of Triple Eight.

“So I’m sure they’re going to work for it and find out what whatever their issues are and fix those up.”

Triple Eight said it had taken “big swings” on setup in Townsville to learn more about the Mustang package following its off-season Ford defection.

The result was a series of poor qualifying runs before a rebound in each of the races.

Grove and Payne have meanwhile emerged as the new benchmark, with the Kiwi scoring at least two podiums at six of the seven circuits visited to date.

“We always try and be the best we can week in and week out and, unfortunately for Broc, he was just on the wrong side of that tenth [of a second],” Payne said.

“It doesn’t take much and he didn’t quite get on top of that.

“Fortunately for us we could take advantage of that when we needed to and keep extending that [points lead].

“I’m sure, no doubt, that they’re going to turn things around at some stage, and he’ll be faster than ever.”

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Dick Johnson Racing’s Brodie Kostecki and Tickford Racing’s Cam Waters are also in the Sprint Cup fight, 187 and 195 points adrift of Payne respectively with 630 points still up for grabs.

Payne is the clear favourite but is wary of a potential pitfall in Perth, where he chased Feeney to the flag in the Sunday race 12 months ago.

“Perth is another one of those tricky Australian older tracks that has a lot of character and it’s tough,” he said.

“You’ve got to have a slightly awkward sort of set-up to make it work really well.

“We’ve seen teams go there in the past and have a really, really strong weekend, and some that have a really, really bad weekend.

“So hopefully, we can do the work to make sure that we’re on the other side of that and can score some good points again.”

Victory in the Sprint Cup guarantees a ticket to the Finals Series, as well as 25 bonus points to take into the Elimination Final on the Gold Coast.

Feeney won the inaugural Sprint Cup last year in dominant fashion over Payne, ending the Ipswich event 345 points clear.

Payne won the Enduro Cup alongside Garth Tander but failed to make the Grand Final following an incident with Cam Waters in the Semi-Final at Sandown.

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