It was a race of strategy in the season opener of the Supercars championship at Sydney Motorsport Park, where Matthew Payne, Andre Heimgartner and Ryan Wood fought hard to bank valuable championship points.
In a Blanchard Racing Team front row lockout, Aaron Cameron got the jump over teammate James Golding to take the lead into the first corner.
At the same time, Payne got jumped by Broc Feeney after a slow start and was moved down to fourth by the second corner. Andre Heimgartner held position on lap one to remain in his starting position of eighth, and Ryan Wood had a horror start to lose five places to end the first lap in twentieth.
Although Payne lost a place on the start, he did not lose his grit and made a big dive bomb on Feeney on lap three, but was quickly passed again through a criss-cross. The stewards were kept busy while the racing stagnated as they investigated a potential jump start for pole sitter James Golding and also contact from Brodie Kostecki on Zach Bates, and while Golding was cleared, Kostecki received a five-second penalty for a ‘bump-and-run’.
The race then dropped into conservative mode, with drivers preserving tyres until the pit window. Wood jumped on the radio on lap twelve to report rear vibrations to his team, where they decided it was best to pit on lap thirteen to fit two new rears on the #2.
Race leader Cameron led a pit frenzy on lap fifteen, but was jumped by Feeney, who pitted two laps earlier. Heimgartner, sitting in fifth, was one of many to go into the lane on lap fifteen and was followed by Payne with a big lockup into the pits on lap sixteen.
Payne emerged in traffic and was jumped by both Cam Waters and Will Brown, where the Triple Eight driver snuck in a tiny gap to get past the Kiwi into turn two.
When his tyres got up to operating temperature, Payne returned serve on Brown, getting back past on the same corner two laps later. After all pitstops had been completed, Payne sat in fifth, Heimgartner sat in eighth, and Wood had made progress up into sixteenth.
The last stages of the race provided battle packs for both Payne and Wood at each end of the grid. The Grove Racing driver trailed Golding and Waters with four laps to go, where he made use of Golding’s move on Waters to sneak through a couple of corners later to sit in fourth with only a few laps to go. At the same time, Wood was caught in a five-car pack of his own with two laps to go, where he cycled back to twenty-first.
Payne finished the race as the highest-placed Kiwi in fourth, just over a second and a half off the podium. Heimgartner finished the race in eighth as the sole Toyota in the top ten, and Wood came home in twenty-first, thirty-six seconds behind race winner Feeney.
“I remembered how to drive, which was a good thing,” said Feeney post-race.
“I can’t be prouder of this team. The effort that’s gone in over the last couple of months has been extraordinary.
“To join Ford once again and get the first win is a dream come true, but to every single person at Triple Eight and Red Bull Ampol Racing, I can’t thank you enough.
“This is an unreal start to our second life at Ford.”
Blanchard Racing teammates Cameron and Golding rounded out the podium.
Supercars take to the track again for Race 2 qualifying tomorrow (21st February) at 5:40pm NZST.
Header Image: Brad Jones Racing
