Payne was bundled out of the championship battle when a clash with Cam Waters in the Sunday race at Sandown damaged his Penrite Mustang.
The 23-year-old Kiwi had been set to comfortably transfer through to the Adelaide Grand Final on points when he launched an attack on Waters for third place.
It appeared an unnecessarily risky battle to engage in, given Waters was taking a “come out swinging” approach in a somewhat desperate bid to climb above the elimination line.
While that has led to questions around both Payne and the Grove team’s handling of the race, Cauchi believes Supercars needs to take its own lessons from it.
Under the new-for-2025 format, championship points for finalists are reset between rounds with seeding points then applied.
The Saturday results at the Gold Coast and Sandown largely dictated who got through to the next round, barring a surprise Sunday winner or a disaster such as that which befell Payne.
“We’re racers and I don’t think we should ever have a situation where we’re telling drivers not to race,” Cauchi told Speedcafe.
“That’s probably a little flaw of the Finals system when it comes to the Sunday of each event with the way the points reset, so that’s something that Supercars should probably look at.
“Easy to say that in hindsight, but Matt obviously thought the move was on, and it was on and probably there was some driving there that was a bit below standard after that.
“But it’s all history now. We’re really happy that we’ve got one car through.”
Payne’s downfall was to the benefit of rookie teammate Kai Allen, who is set to fight out the title with Broc Feeney, Chaz Mostert and Will Brown in Adelaide this weekend.
While Payne has been among the front-runners all year and would be second in the standings under the traditional format, Allen has scored the eighth-most points this year.
“Kai deserves to be there,” said Cauchi of Allen, who only scraped into the Finals Series thanks to Feeney denying Andre Heimgartner with a move on the last lap of the Bathurst 1000.
“He’s had a sensational rookie season, and it’s just been getting better and better every single round, his speed, and his racecraft and race pace has been as good as anybody.
“We’ll go to Adelaide with one car in with a shot to win the championship, and we’re going to be doing absolutely everything to make sure that it is us that gets the trophy.”
Cauchi believes Allen is “absolutely” a chance to steal the crown in Adelaide – a track where he has been a part of Super3 and Super2 deciders in each of the last three years.
“We’re going to be the dark horse, there’s no doubt about that, but we’ve been the dark horse for a while,” he said.
“We’re the youngest team in the pit lane in a lot of aspects in terms of how long this team’s been formed, the age of our drivers, the average age of our personnel, and here we are sitting in P2 in the [teams’] championship with one driver that’s still got a shot to win the drivers’.
“At the start of the year, probably zero people outside of this team thought that was possible. So, we’re super proud.”
Payne also has plenty to be proud of from his season having won the Bathurst 1000 alongside Garth Tander and the Jason Richards Trophy, awarded on home soil in New Zealand.
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