Latest / Rusty's Garage / The Motorsport Brief: Tackling Townsville with Matt Payne

Transcript

The Motorsport Brief: Tackling Townsville with Matt Payne · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:04
  Welcome to the Motorsport Brief.
• 0:06
  We've enjoyed shining a light on the new brigade of fast young racers in supercars, but one name hasn't been on the pod yet.
• 0:13
  So why don't we sort that today?
• 0:16
  G'day everybody, Rusty here.
• 0:18
  Welcome to another ep of the Shortcast.
• 0:20
  Matt Payne is today's guest and we've got a bit of ground to cover with him too, from a Darwin debrief to a Townsville prep sheet, plus the learnings of what it takes to succeed in this sport off the track and who's been helping with advice.
• 0:33
  the Grove ingredients and why this squad will become a regular force in the supercars pit lane and a whole lot more.
• 0:39
  Now we offer feature episodes.
• 0:41
  You know that we've done that since day dot Alistair McRae is out soon from growing up around his legendary dad, Jimmy in the British rally championship, making it to the WRC with Hyundai and a few yarns on his superstar brother, the late Colin McRae.
• 0:56
  That's out next week.
• 0:57
  We've also recorded a short cast with former F1 driver,
• 1:00
  turned artist and driver manager, Stefan Johansson.
• 1:04
  I loved spending a bit of time with him.
• 1:06
  That's out soon too.
• 1:07
  What you might know is that we have a brand new addition in the garage, bright and shiny, only driven between events, and we're letting supercars drivers
• 1:15
  behind the mic for it.
• 1:17
  Listener is thrilled as a part of its Southern Cross Austereo partnership to be offering a brand new pod between Supercars Rounds.
• 1:24
  It's called Drivers Only.
• 1:25
  They're in charge.
• 1:27
  No journos or broadcasters like me steering the convo.
• 1:30
  F1 dropped after Darwin with David Reynolds, Thomas Randall and Ryan Wood.
• 1:34
  Some good laughs in there.
• 1:35
  You can find it in our garage library.
• 1:37
  wherever you get your podcasts.
• 1:39
  We hope you enjoy that if you haven't already done so.
• 1:41
  With some rotating members on that panel, hopefully today's guest will join them for a laugh at some stage.
• 1:47
  In the meantime, we've got plenty to talk to him about, including his own career, the speedy trajectory he's been on to this point, getting a break in the sport, and his dreams of replicating his success at Adelaide, one of the toughest events on the calendar.
• 2:02
  He is on the line.
• 2:03
  Let's check it out now.
• 2:04
  Here he is.
• 2:07
  Welcome, mate.
• 2:08
  Let's, I mean, you're gearing up for Townsville as you and I talk.
• 2:12
  Why don't we look at the year so far?
• 2:14
  Give us a kind of report card from your point of view and from the kind of Penrith Racing standpoint too.
• 2:21
  Yeah, obviously, started out pretty well, I guess, you know, for the first three rounds.
• 2:26
  We had a, we had, you know, a couple of poles, one at Taupo, which was really awesome, and
• 2:32
  And then a couple of podiums at AGP, which was really cool.
• 2:35
  Probably, yeah, missed out on a few good results there as well.
• 2:38
  But it's, you know, that was going really well.
• 2:42
  And the last couple of rounds, it's been quite tough.
• 2:44
  I think we've sort of lost that edge we've had in qualifying a little bit.
• 2:48
  You know, we've probably...
• 2:50
  you know, previously we were finding it easy to kind of get in the top five, but now it's, you know, hard work to get into the 10, which shows how competitive this category is.
• 3:00
  So it's, we're still fourth in the team's championship, which is, it's good.
• 3:06
  It's, you know, we always wanted to be a little bit higher.
• 3:09
  And when we were in second, it was good.
• 3:12
  We wanted to try and challenge the Red Bull cars, but
• 3:16
  We sort of seem to have lost our way a little bit, which is, you know, a little bit sort of hard to deal with.
• 3:23
  Everyone's trying to work harder here and, you know, improve the setup.
• 3:28
  Everyone's trying to, you know, get better at doing their roles, engineers and drivers.
• 3:32
  etc so yeah it's been it's been good like if you spoke to me before darwin i probably would have been a little bit happier but it's um it was a hard weekend up there and you know obviously having a pretty couple of bad races hasn't helped myself in the championship so it's uh yeah it's time to uh time to put the hammer down and get back to where we were a couple of rounds ago
• 3:56
  Cool.
• 3:56
  You're still top 10 in the driver's championship points.
• 3:59
  How much of what you've just talked about is kind of internal grove racing and, you know, working with that Gen 3 car?
• 4:06
  And how much is the Mustang, more broadly speaking?
• 4:10
  I don't want to, you know, fire up the whole parody debate, but is there an element of that that you guys are sort of looking at at the moment?
• 4:17
  To be fair, there always is something going on with the Mustang, whether it's developing new throttle maps or probably the aero stuff's probably taken on hold a bit since last year.
• 4:32
  As we all know, they were continually...
• 4:35
  updating that but to be fair a lot of it is is grove internally like we we know we still have a lot of room for improvement whether it comes from uh preparation before a race weekend or even just procedure wise um you know there's there's a lot we still have to analyze and try and get right um you know
• 4:56
  I think from sort of a little bit more of a detailed view, I think our mechanics and, you know, car prep and things like that are quite good.
• 5:07
  You know, I only had the one mechanical on Sunday.
• 5:10
  in Darwin.
• 5:11
  I don't think I could recall another mechanical being that major in the whole time I've been in supercars with the team.
• 5:18
  So our car prep has been very well done and our mechanics are getting on very well.
• 5:24
  I think the team culture is the best it's ever been since I've been here.
• 5:29
  So it's really awesome to see that.
• 5:31
  I think we just faded a little bit in terms of the engineering side and sort of cast it up a little bit.
• 5:37
  I think we lost our way and probably tried a few different philosophies from our findings at testing at Winton, and it hasn't really worked out for us.
• 5:48
  So it's almost like we keep going back to the drawing board and we keep turning up with something different, but nothing's really had a magic click.
• 5:58
  It hasn't just...
• 5:59
  rolled out and been, well, holy moly, we're on it now.
• 6:02
  So still waiting to find that.
• 6:05
  The Grove family are successful business operators.
• 6:08
  I know, I think from conversations with Stephen, they know it just takes time to build a championship winning race team, an organisation that's regularly in the winner's circle and so on.
• 6:19
  There's
• 6:20
  There was so much kind of energy around that coming into 2024 because all of these good ingredients were there.
• 6:27
  What's it like from a top-line management perspective?
• 6:29
  Because I'm imagining they want that continued success like you enjoyed in Adelaide and so on.
• 6:35
  But it is, as you rightly just pointed out, such a tough game.
• 6:38
  Yeah, exactly right.
• 6:40
  You know, end of last year, we were really building some good momentum.
• 6:44
  And, you know, we had sort of four or five rounds where we would be continuously in the top 10, which gave me like a lot of confidence heading into this year.
• 6:54
  And especially, you know, to do well at the last round, I think everyone was expecting big things for us and to be serious championship contenders, which, you know,
• 7:03
  To say we still are is true.
• 7:06
  It's just we're not on the podium every single round, which is a little bit frustrating at the moment.
• 7:13
  But I think if the Groves know anything, it's how to do hard work and how to get the most out of hard work.
• 7:22
  So they know as well as anyone does how hard this game can be.
• 7:27
  And because they run such a successful business, they know...
• 7:32
  They know it takes a lot of time and effort to get to the highest level, which we're still trying to achieve.
• 7:41
  So it's very positive being around them because they're very understanding and it fills me with a lot of confidence knowing that they're very –
• 7:51
  They know we're going to get there one day, but it's not tomorrow.
• 7:55
  So it's everyone else working hard here behind the scenes and just chipping away and, you know, we'll be there continuously, more consistently, you know, with rounds to come, I can imagine.
• 8:09
  So you're still in your early 20s, right?
• 8:10
  Your growth as a racing driver is still on an upward trajectory.
• 8:16
  What have you learned behind the scenes about what it takes to be that kind of complete package as a racing driver, the effort that's required?
• 8:26
  And have people like Garth Tander been good in offering some support or guidance there?
• 8:33
  Oh, Garth's been huge for me.
• 8:35
  I think people see him a lot as sort of a hardworking, he's got a lot of grip behind him.
• 8:43
  Even when people raced against him, they all probably ran into each other at some stage.
• 8:50
  Yeah, he's been really good.
• 8:52
  It's so much like for me, from my understanding, the driving part for me hasn't been the biggest change in my life, I should say.
• 9:06
  I think a lot of people can prove that they can get in a supercar or a Gen 3 Mustang or Camaro or whatever it is, and they can get in and within half a day they could be on the pace.
• 9:17
  If you get a solid, good driver in.
• 9:19
  But...
• 9:21
  It's about once you get signed and you get invested in the team a lot more, it's about showing up early and training those hours which you don't want to train.
• 9:33
  It's about putting in the preparation before the rounds that you know when you turn up to the track, you've already answered all the questions you have.
• 9:41
  It's a lot of the off-track stuff that I've had to learn to
• 9:44
  to just, you know, establish being in my daily life, that's sort of been the biggest surprise.
• 9:51
  Well, not surprise, but it's been the biggest effect that, you know, racing's had on me and especially being in this team.
• 9:58
  Everyone works so hard, you know, like...
• 10:00
  The culture here is really good.
• 10:04
  It makes me feel like I just want to improve every day, which is really good for a team sport.
• 10:12
  That's been probably the major things.
• 10:14
  That's taken me back a little bit and it's taken me a little bit of time to actually fully incorporate those sort of things into my daily week.
• 10:24
  being a racing driver, you do have some time on the board when it comes to a week.
• 10:28
  Some people work normal jobs, but a lot of us, we come into the workshop, do our thing, and then you go home and wait for the next race.
• 10:37
  So it can get very busy, though, if you sort of are focusing on different things.
• 10:43
  But yeah, it's definitely a hard game, but I think I'm learning how to sort of,
• 10:50
  get my head around it and be more prepared for future races.
• 10:54
  Good stuff.
• 10:54
  The business, the university, if you like, of motorsport.
• 10:58
  Yeah.
• 10:58
  Now, you're a Kiwi in an Aussie racing team.
• 11:02
  That by nature means there's some stirring at times.
• 11:05
  That means that there's probably nicknames.
• 11:07
  What nickname have the team given you and why?
• 11:11
  It's a pretty funny one, actually.
• 11:14
  It's...
• 11:16
  Well, obviously, I'm a very tall guy, tall guy, 6'3", pretty lanky, pretty clumsy at times, can be, you know, spit the odd funny joke around.
• 11:26
  So for some reason, like when I first came here and it was probably like it would have been halfway through 2022, some reason Brenton came up with this weird idea that I reminded him of Clifford the Big Red Dog, you know.
• 11:44
  So now my nickname's Cliff in the theme, which has nothing to do with being a Kiwi.
• 11:52
  But it's quite funny.
• 11:55
  It's what they call me.
• 11:56
  Like, it's just become normal now.
• 11:59
  So I thought that it's actually pretty accurate if you think about it, like, in terms of kind of a metaphor.
• 12:06
  So that's pretty funny.
• 12:08
  But it's cool having Richie in the team, you know, obviously another Kiwi and...
• 12:13
  Dave was awesome last year.
• 12:16
  I don't think I would have wanted it any different.
• 12:20
  Having Dave as my first-year teammate, he's super relaxed.
• 12:25
  He's pretty casual about things, which can be good and can be bad.
• 12:28
  But I did learn a little bit off him just how to manage a weekend and how to settle the nerves.
• 12:37
  you know, just how to go about things and not be, but not put too much pressure on myself, which, which was really important.
• 12:45
  So yeah, he was really funny, but it's cool to have Richie now.
• 12:48
  And, you know, him being a Kiwi is, is, is very special for, for, for me.
• 12:53
  And, you know, I think the whole team, you know, it showed at Taupo when we, you know, had the sort of double Kiwi thing going and, you know,
• 13:01
  There was Mert flying off the stand and everyone was wearing pin rack gear and there were so many supporters there.
• 13:06
  It was probably the greatest weekend of my life.
• 13:09
  But I'm really getting along well with Richie.
• 13:14
  We have so many laughs and half the time I'm laughing at the joke, but half the time I'm just laughing at him because he gets a real wheeze laugh going.
• 13:22
  So it's so...
• 13:24
  It's so funny, but we're actually just building a new simulator downstairs.
• 13:28
  So I'll go and join them after this and help out.
• 13:31
  So it's pretty cool.
• 13:32
  Cool.
• 13:34
  Just on the note about Topor, massive for the sport, right?
• 13:38
  Kiwis were hungry for the return of supercars and so on.
• 13:42
  You get a pole position there as you reflected before.
• 13:46
  Overall, that's a pretty special weekend in your career.
• 13:49
  Yeah.
• 13:50
  Oh, it was huge.
• 13:51
  Like, you know, especially being at Taupo, I think the location was right and I think the town really embraced having supercars there and it showed.
• 14:03
  I didn't go out on Sunday or anything like that to see the...
• 14:08
  kind of atmosphere that was going on.
• 14:09
  But just even from the track to town activity we did with the cars, like everyone was getting around it.
• 14:15
  I've never driven into an area with so many people like, you know, around the cars and it was awesome.
• 14:23
  And to have my family there and all my friends and that, you know, I saw people I hadn't seen for five-plus years and, you know,
• 14:31
  They say they've been following me the whole way.
• 14:33
  It's very, very special.
• 14:36
  I think the fans really, even the weather wasn't great on Saturday, but the fans were still there cheering all of us on.
• 14:44
  It showed how important Supercars is to New Zealand and I think it just proves that it was what was needed in the sport to bring it back.
• 14:55
  back to home.
• 14:56
  So it's, it's, it's really cool.
• 14:58
  I'm really looking forward to next year when we go back, hopefully I can, you know, stay on the podium this time.
• 15:04
  I was, I was leading, but I, I sort of, we didn't quite have the speed, which was a little bit disappointing, but you know, still to qualify on pole was, was really cool.
• 15:13
  And everyone was elated with that.
• 15:14
  So yeah, it was a special weekend.
• 15:17
  We'll sneak a quick break here on Rusty's Garage.
• 15:19
  More of our convo with Matt Payne in just a few moments.
• 15:25
  You're listening to the Motorsport Brief, our garage shortcast with Penrite Racing's Matt Payne.
• 15:30
  Already a winner in supercars, he has a very bright future ahead of him.
• 15:34
  And as you'll hear, some great people in his corner, as they say, giving him the guidance you need as a young racer to become that complete package.
• 15:42
  Let's continue the convo now.
• 15:45
  I'm glad you brought up the timeline there a moment ago of how long you've been at Penrite Racing.
• 15:50
  And it reminds me of your success in the Toyota Racing Series in 2021, what they now call the Formula Regional Oceania Championship there in New Zealand.
• 15:58
  So many great names have come through that from Lando Norris and more.
• 16:03
  That year, I think you were third in the Grand Prix.
• 16:05
  Shane might have won it.
• 16:07
  You won the title.
• 16:08
  How instrumental on the pathway was that to getting noticed by the Groves and helping you get in the door ultimately where you are now?
• 16:16
  Yeah, I mean, you could say it was probably one of the most important sort of steps I did in my racing career.
• 16:24
  That year in 2020, I was planning on doing a full campaign in Europe in KZ2, which was going to be my last year in karting.
• 16:33
  We already agreed on that.
• 16:35
  But I only ended up getting to do like two or three races in Italy before I came home.
• 16:40
  Goddamn pandemic, mate, hey?
• 16:42
  Yeah.
• 16:43
  So I was actually having this conversation with someone else yesterday, but I was like,
• 16:48
  Everyone sees COVID as a bit of a negative thing.
• 16:51
  It's stopped a lot of people from racing, which is completely fair.
• 16:55
  But for me, it kind of brought everything a little bit more forward.
• 17:00
  And I started and I got some laps in that formula forward a little bit earlier than I would have.
• 17:05
  I tested an old FT50 TRS car.
• 17:09
  I probably would have never done that.
• 17:11
  And I know for a fact I would never have done the Toyota Racing Series if it wasn't for COVID.
• 17:16
  And I came home and we didn't have anything to race.
• 17:19
  And we knew we were going to do the Career Cup Championship in 2021 with Bambas.
• 17:25
  That deal was already done.
• 17:27
  we knew we needed to do some racing before that to kind of prepare myself for that championship because that's obviously a very competitive championship in itself.
• 17:37
  So, yeah, it was a really good decision to do the TRS series.
• 17:41
  Like, I remember, you know, getting in the car the first time, the older one, the FT50M,
• 17:47
  That thing was a blast to drive.
• 17:48
  I only just fit in it.
• 17:50
  Like, it was pretty tight.
• 17:52
  But I did a few test days in that.
• 17:54
  It's probably still one of the best cars I've ever driven.
• 17:56
  As well as the FT60, I really enjoyed doing that.
• 18:00
  It's a little bit different style, but you were rewarded when you got it right.
• 18:05
  Yeah, the Grand Prix was, you know, I probably would rank that in my, you know, top five race weekends in my whole career.
• 18:12
  It was awesome, you know, like, as I said before, my friends and family came out.
• 18:18
  You know, I'd been training for it for a long time, being in New Zealand, so I was super fit.
• 18:24
  I was ready for it.
• 18:25
  I remember those cars, they used to have seriously heavy steering, you know, like, and I'd been going to the gym, so I was actually running the heavy
• 18:35
  It was an awesome weekend and to be that fast straight away and get some solid results was really promising.
• 18:45
  I knew I was going to be competitive because we'd done a lot of testing, so it kind of lent us to know where we were going to be at.
• 18:51
  But yeah, to obviously win the championship, I know like…
• 18:55
  It was a COVID year, so, you know, there probably wasn't as much competition having the Europeans come over and things like that.
• 19:02
  But you still got to cross the line and you still got to win it.
• 19:05
  Totally.
• 19:06
  So it was definitely good to sort of have that as a sort of –
• 19:11
  stamp in the book I guess you could say in terms of championship but it was uh it was really I really like the Twitter guys with Nico and um you know all those guys doing the series they really do a good job so it's cool to come back every summer and kind of catch around or two if I can watch the the younger guys come through that I've sort of watched in carding it's cool
• 19:31
  I hope you get to do that this off-season as well.
• 19:33
  It's our first chance to catch up with you since the Grand Prix in Melbourne.
• 19:37
  There was a bit of a flashpoint there for you with the incident with Cam Waters at the final corner there at Albert Park.
• 19:42
  Have you two spoken with the benefit of time?
• 19:44
  Is that still tender between the very few?
• 19:46
  What's that like?
• 19:48
  No, it was actually quite good because obviously that happened on Saturday and I texted them and we caught up actually on Sunday, that Sunday morning and sort of talked about it and we agreed on whatever it was and being a racing incident.
• 20:05
  both played a part in, I guess you could say.
• 20:07
  So, yeah, that was all cleared pretty quickly.
• 20:09
  I don't have any hard feelings towards Cam.
• 20:12
  He's a hard racer and I respect him and I still talk to him quite a bit now at the track, so it's a cool thing.
• 20:19
  But, yeah, it was a good weekend for us, but it was, you know, tough to sort of swallow...
• 20:27
  that pill because I think, you know, we had a couple of wins go astray there and, you know, I think we had the card to do it.
• 20:34
  So, yeah, it was hard at the time but I think, you know, not...
• 20:39
  you know, racing the way I did and not backing out from those kinds of passes and, you know, really racing those front guys as hard as I could proved, you know, I'm not here to come around and get tossed around.
• 20:51
  I'm here to race and I'm here to win.
• 20:53
  So I think it was important, you know, whether I won or whether we got, you know, we crashed into each other.
• 20:59
  I think it still was a beneficial weekend for us.
• 21:02
  To finish, the Groves obviously dabble in some racing overseas from time to time.
• 21:07
  Your focus is naturally supercars right now, but is there room in the program to do a couple of international things here and there?
• 21:12
  Is that at all part of the plan?
• 21:14
  Yeah, well, I've done three GT races this year with the Groves.
• 21:19
  You know, to be fair, all of them have ended prematurely before the end of the finished flag, which is a little bit disappointing, a lot due to mechanicals and, you know, accidents happening.
• 21:30
  But I really enjoyed doing Sepang.
• 21:33
  That was really cool.
• 21:34
  That was a super hot race.
• 21:37
  You know, the car was so fast.
• 21:39
  We were on for a win, I think.
• 21:42
  We're just Brenton had a bit of an accident on the restart, but it was cool to have Woody there as well.
• 21:46
  He was in the Porsche, so that was funny.
• 21:49
  But in terms of the future for this year, I'm not too sure.
• 21:52
  I think they are going to focus on the Australian GT stuff and Steve and Brenton are going to focus on that.
• 21:59
  But I think they're looking at doing maybe a couple more over in Europe
• 22:05
  towards the end of the year, but for now, my focus is fully on supercars.
• 22:09
  And because we're not quite maximizing that at the moment, I think it's good to just put 100% of my focus on that.
• 22:17
  So, yeah, I think there's definitely room for more next year, but for now, I just want to nail the end of this year and finish it off on a high.
• 22:26
  Cool.
• 22:26
  Great approach.
• 22:27
  Lastly, you're a really good friend of Liam Lawson's.
• 22:30
  I think the pair of you as little tackers used to race cars in the sand at the beach and so on, both climbing the ladder, different directions that you've gone.
• 22:38
  Have you spoken to him lately and do you kind of share how you respectively are going in that mission?
• 22:43
  Yeah, well, it was good.
• 22:45
  We sort of caught up at the start of the year in New Zealand and hung out a little bit.
• 22:50
  I saw him at the Grand Prix, which was pretty cool.
• 22:52
  I didn't realize he was going to drive a supercar until I saw his name getting stickered on it the day before.
• 22:57
  And I said, geez, do you know about this?
• 23:00
  And he's like, yeah, I'm not sure what I'm going to do.
• 23:02
  And he really enjoyed it, which I knew he would because I know he likes those cars and he's always been a fan of supercars.
• 23:09
  But...
• 23:10
  Yeah, he's been doing really well.
• 23:13
  It's cool to see him right up there getting opportunities to race.
• 23:17
  When he raced an F1 last year, it was obviously very special for his family and all of our friends around to see him finally achieve that goal of to get on the grid.
• 23:29
  It's been a little bit of a shame of kind of what's happened.
• 23:32
  I thought, you know, he would have got a seat, you know, a year ago or this year.
• 23:36
  But I think the future's looking up.
• 23:38
  You know, I really hope he can get there and, you know, finish the deal off and prove to everyone.
• 23:45
  I think he's a very good driver and he can get the job done when it counts.
• 23:50
  So, yeah, I just, you know, I keep in touch sometimes, but I hope he gets there in the end.
• 23:56
  We hope so too, mate.
• 23:57
  And on your own front, go well in Townsville, certainly for the endurance races.
• 24:03
  And Adelaide's got a little special place in your heart with some success there.
• 24:07
  That is going to be one mega event there.
• 24:10
  Go well in the 2024 edition.
• 24:12
  Really.
• 24:12
  Thanks, Rusty.
• 24:15
  Should be a mega weekend there in Townsville.
• 24:17
  Enjoy that.
• 24:18
  As I mentioned at the top, keep an eye out for notifications too on the next edition, the next episode of Drivers Only, a brand new official supercars pod that lives right here in Rusty's garage.
• 24:30
  F1 with Thomas Randall, Dave Reynolds and Ryan Wood was fantastic.
• 24:34
  Give that a listen if you haven't already.
• 24:35
  The next step is being recorded in the days after Townsville, so we're looking forward to seeing who joins the panel there.
• 24:42
  That is it for this week.
• 24:43
  We'll catch you next time, everybody.
• 24:44
  Bye for now.
• 24:45
  Thank you.