Payne seals Jason Richards Trophy with Sunday Taupo win

The Kiwi came into the day leading the ‘JR’ standings courtesy of a win and a fifth on Saturday, and put it beyond doubt in impressive fashion in the third and final race.

From sixth on the grid he made quick progress during a frantic start to the race that saw the likes of Brodie Kostecki, Anton De Pasquale and Ryan Wood hit trouble.

Payne then executed an aggressive pass on leader Cam Hill on Lap 8 to take over a lead he would hold until the finish.

“It’s pretty special. I’m pretty lost for words really,” he said.

“That was a really long race, a really long time out in front. I managed to get the lead pretty early on, I knew I had to do that because I knew we had strong pace.

“There was action aplenty at the start. Brodie [Kostecki] and [Ryan Wood], I knew they were going to fight hard because I knew Woody really wanted it.

“It ended up putting them a little bit further back and me and Cam could sort of take advantage of it.”

Kostecki and De Pasquale both made solid getaways from the front row of the grid, but would be shuffled down the order by the end of the first lap.

For De Pasquale things went pear-shaped at the first corner when he out-braked himself and dropped back to seventh.

Kostecki ran slightly wide too, although was initially able to hold onto the lead.

That was until a fast-starting Ryan Wood made a play for the lead, running Kostecki wide in the process which dropped the polesitter back to seventh, behind De Pasquale.

The Wood/Kostecki tussle allowed Hill to sweep into the lead followed by Matt Payne, as Wood dropped back to fourth behind Thomas Randle.

Things went from bad to worse for Wood moments later when he was slapped with a five-second time penalty for running Kostecki out of road on the first lap.

On Lap 8 there was another change for the lead when Payne muscled his way past Hill on the grass on the inside of Turn 4.

The contact between the two unsettled Hill enough for Randle to sneak into second.

Hill was the first of the front-runners to make his first stop on Lap 16, Payne following suit a lap later.

Despite a slightly slow stop Payne was able to hold onto the effective lead ahead of Hill, an early-stopping Will Brown and Randle, who dropped back after his Lap 19 stop.

Randle put himself back into a podium position six laps later when he comfortably cleared Brown into the first corner.

Payne controlled the second stint of the race, holding a consistent 1.5s margin over Hill with Randle roughly the same distance behind in third.

The margin between Payne and Hill crept out to more than 3s as the stint wore on, before Hill and Randle both took their second stops on Lap 39.

Once again Randle was shuffled back to fourth in the effective order in that process, this time jumped by a recovering Kostecki who stopped a lap earlier.

Payne covered the rest of the front-runners by stopping on Lap 40 and resumed with his 3s buffer over Hill intact.

From there it was all about management for Payne, who cruised to the finish to win by 3s.

Hill was a lonely second, while it was Mostert who ended up on the third step of the podium courtesy of a rapid final stint.

The WAU star stopped several laps later than Kostecki and Randle and was able to run them down to end up in third.

Kostecki was left battling handling issues at the finish but was able to hold off Randle for fourth.

Andre Heimgartner was the second-best Kiwi and second-best Camaro driver in sixth, although he did have to hold off a rapid Broc Feeney in the closing stages.

Recovering from a poor qualifying effort, Feeney ran long in both stints which left him with good tyre condition for the run home.

He managed to close up on the back of Heimgartner with several laps to go, their heated battle including contact on the very last lap.

Haimgartner was able to stay ahead, though, leaving Feeney in seventh, ahead of teammate Will Brown.

Will Davison came home ninth with James Golding rounding out the top 10.

Wood slipped back to 11th by the finish while Cam Waters was just 12th after a difficult race that included a tangle with Macauley Jones and a very slow second stop.

De Pasquale, meanwhile, slipped all the way back to 16th.

Brown continues to lead the championship by 34 points over Waters, with Payne now third, 46 points in arrears.

The Supercars season continues on May 9-11 with the Tasmania Super440.

Results: Repco Supercars Championship ITM Taupo Super440, Race 10