By Andrew Clarke
Date posted: 1 August 2026
Matthew Payne won a wild opening race of the Bosch Power Tools Perth Super440, surviving a late Safety Car restart at Perth’s Wanneroo Raceway to beat Ryan Wood and a charging Anton De Pasquale on Saturday.
The Grove Racing driver had built a comfortable lead when a clash between Kai Allen and Brodie Kostecki bunched the field with 11 laps to run, wiping out his buffer and forcing him to defend a restart he would rather have avoided.
“It’s never nice when you have about eight laps to go and you’re going to be in a train again,” Payne said.
He need not have worried. Payne nailed the getaway and edged clear once more to take the chequered flag 3.1s ahead of Wood, with De Pasquale completing the podium after climbing six places from his grid slot.
Payne hunts down Waters for the lead
Off the line it was Cameron Waters who struck first. Starting alongside Payne on the front row, the Tickford Racing driver used the cleaner side of the track to grab the holeshot into Turn 1, while Wood slotted through ahead of Thomas Randle.
Payne bided his time before making his move on Waters into the final corner on Lap 5, with Wood following him through to snatch second. Wood nearly completed the double on the run to Turn 1, but Payne covered the inside line and ran his fellow New Zealander to the edge of the pit straight.
Randle then handed third to Allen when the Tickford Mustang stepped out of line at Turn 1. By Lap 10 Payne and Wood had broken clear of Waters, while Kostecki led a six-car train scrapping over the minor placings.
Pitstops reshuffle the pack
The compulsory stops turned the race on its head, with tyre choice the decisive factor.
Kostecki blinked first among the frontrunners, pitting from sixth on Lap 19 for three tyres. Allen and Randle followed two laps later and took four apiece, only for Kostecki to undercut Randle and emerge alongside Allen. With more temperature in his rubber, Kostecki muscled his way past Allen into Turn 1 on Lap 24.
The biggest winner was Chaz Mostert. The Walkinshaw TWG Racing driver gambled on just two tyres and vaulted the squabbling pack to run a projected third once the sequence played out.
At the front, Wood took four fresh tyres on Lap 27 and Payne responded a lap later, the leader comfortably retaining top spot. Waters was not so fortunate. A problem with the right-rear wheel left him stationary far too long and dropped him from the leading group to outside the top 10, a stop that ultimately cost him a shot at the podium.
Allen and Kostecki clash triggers the Safety Car
Once the order settled, Payne led Wood, Mostert, Kostecki and Allen, with the fight between Allen and Kostecki quickly turning ugly.
Allen collected two bad sportsmanship flags in the space of a few laps, one for running Randle onto the grass and another for track limits at the final corner, as Randle and then De Pasquale piled into the battle. De Pasquale eventually cleared them both.
The scrap reached its conclusion on Lap 39 when Allen and Kostecki made contact at Turn 1. Kostecki speared into the gravel trap and was beached, bringing out the Safety Car and erasing Payne’s four-second lead at a stroke.
Restart ignites a seven-lap sprint
The caution set up a grandstand finish. Payne led the field back to green on Lap 44 for a seven-lap dash, and while the leader once again drove away, the restart lit the fuse behind him.
Randle was the biggest casualty, tumbling from sixth to ninth inside a lap as Waters, Heimgartner and Feeney swept past. With four laps left, Waters, Allen and Mostert ran three-wide out of Turn 6 and down the back straight, Waters and Mostert emerging in front and Allen shuffled back to sixth.
Broc Feeney capped a strong recovery from an early off at Turn 5 to finish seventh and bank the race’s fastest lap, while De Pasquale reeled in Wood in the closing stages but ran out of road, taking third by less than a second.
At the head of the field, Payne was untroubled.
“The Penrite Racing Mustang was so fast today,” he said. “It’s been good all qualifying, and I managed to get Cam early at the start and press on for the victory.”
The win extended Payne’s lead at the top of the standings over nearest rival Feeney, with the second Perth sprint to follow later on Saturday.
Repco Supercars Championship | Race 23
Pos
No
Driver
Team
Lap
Gap
1
19
Matthew Payne
Penrite Racing
50
2
2
Ryan Wood
Mobil 1 Truck Assist Racing
50
+3.1782
3
18
Anton De Pasquale
Dewalt Racing
50
+3.8666
4
6
Cameron Waters
Monster Castrol Racing
50
+5.5920
5
1
Chaz Mostert
Mobil 1 Optus Racing
50
+6.6264
6
26
Kai Allen
Penrite Racing
50
+7.1057
7
88
Broc Feeney
Red Bull Ampol Racing
50
+7.4877
8
8
Andre Heimgartner
R & J Batteries Racing
50
+8.0338
9
55
Thomas Randle
Monster Castrol Racing
50
+10.6520
10
38
Rylan Gray
Shell V-Power Racing Team
50
+11.0871
11
4
Jack Le Brocq
Sherrin Rentals Racing
50
+12.9245
12
888
William Brown
Red Bull Ampol Racing
50
+13.1210
13
99
Cooper Murray
Total Energies Quartz Racing
50
+13.2660
14
14
Cameron Hill
Statewide Bearings Racing
50
+13.7864
15
7
James Golding
CoolDrive Racing
50
+14.0836
16
3
Aaron Cameron
LIQUIMOLY Blahst Racing
50
+14.4066
17
11
Jackson Walls
Objective Racing
50
+14.9774
18
9
Jobe Stewart
Erebus Motorsport
50
+15.2296
19
20
David Reynolds
Snowy River Racing
50
+16.3600
20
31
Jayden Ojeda
PremiAir Racing
50
+16.4487
21
777
Declan Fraser
PremiAir Racing
50
+16.8461
22
10
Zach Bates
Bendix Racing
50
+17.0092
23
96
Macauley Jones
Blackwoods Racing
49
+1 lap
24
17
Brodie Kostecki
Shell V-Power Racing Team
47
+3 laps
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