Expert Preview: Payne vs distraction, rookie's surprise SVG comparison

This is an exclusive pre-event Supercars.com column by championship-winning Race Engineer Scott Sinclair. Sinclair will preview and debrief each round of the 2026 Repco Supercars Championship from his own perspective.

Matt Payne's return to the track after a turbulent few weeks, the strategy needed to overtake at Hidden Valley, why Zach Bates is quietly impressing, and the split-decision title fight at the top.

Will Matt Payne be distracted?

There’s certainly been plenty going on in Matt Payne’s world if you’ve read the press he’s received over the last few weeks.

He’ll no doubt be looking forward to putting his helmet back on and doing what he does best. It will be an interesting watch, however, to see how he approaches this weekend and whether there are any lingering signs of frustration.

Payne has been the benchmark for car speed over the first 16 races this year. He’s finished outside the top five in only four of 16 races; three of which were the result of incidents outside his control. But his competitors are bridging the gap race by race.

In Tasmania, Broc Feeney outpaced Payne over a race weekend for the first time this year. No doubt Payne’s broken wrist contributed to this, but in addition to Feeney, Ryan Wood and Kai Allen are also closing in on Payne’s pace advantage.

Payne's battle with Feeney will be the main story, but watching for any signs the last few weeks have got to him will be just as telling.

How to strategise overtakes at Hidden Valley

One of the challenges around the Hidden Valley layout is managing your tyres, particularly while trying to overtake.

The high ambient and track temperatures mean your tyres are already close to dropping out of their performance window before you even catch another car to attempt an overtake.

Once you are within striking distance of another car, the probability of completing an overtake on equally aged tyres peaks on the second lap of the battle. If you haven't completed the overtake within the first two laps, your chances of getting it done from there on are roughly halved, and continue to fall the longer the battle drags on.

So if you can't move forward by overtaking on equal aged tyres, the only option is to run a strategy that gives you a tyre quality difference to those around you. At Hidden Valley, with a four lap tyre advantage, the chances of making the overtake are 2.4 times better than on equal tyres.

Staying out and losing positions to gain that tyre advantage is always a gamble; however, if you have the pace but are unable to use it, the numbers suggest it is a risk worth taking.

Bates' quiet progress

We saw plenty of Zach Bates early in the season as he seemed to be caught up in a never-ending string of incidents. That's not unusual for a newcomer, so to really evaluate a rookie’s performance you have to dig a bit deeper into the data. For Bates, there’s plenty to suggest his rookie season is progressing well.

Across the last two events at Christchurch and Tasmania, he ranked #1 for Race Pace on the Super Soft tyre, and ranked 10th overall for Race Pace.

He also currently sits in a rare group of drivers who are ranked in the top five for both Overtakes and Tyre Degradation. It's an exclusive group because making overtakes typically wears your tyres more, making it difficult to be ranked top five in both.

As a reference, the name that appears the most in this group over the years is none other than Shane Van Gisbergen.

Bates is also ranked #1 for improving his car speed throughout a race weekend - that is, he improves the most from the first race to the last race. It's something you assume should occur with all rookies, but it’s not always the case.

So while we haven’t seen as much of him lately, in the background he’s been quietly ticking the boxes.

What to expect this weekend

The Camaro domination of Hidden Valley will likely come to an end this weekend with Ford securing their first Gen3 race win.

Where Toyota lands is anyone’s guess after their Tasmania surprise. Clearly their chassis is performing well, so how their engine performs in the Darwin heat will be a talking point.

The main event for the weekend though is the next iteration of the Feeney, Payne, Kostecki battle. All things considered, I’d say it's a split decision so far between all three, despite Feeney having the championship points advantage.

Ryan Wood and Kai Allen are the ones most likely to take it up to the big three across the weekend. That said, Hidden Valley has historically sprung a number of surprise race winners. All you need to do is get to the front, hold off the challengers for two laps, and victory will be yours!

Scott Sinclair is one of the most respected voices in pit lane, famously engineering James Courtney to the 2010 championship with Dick Johnson Racing. Sinclair also spent stints at the Holden Racing Team and Kelly Racing, spent time on the Supercars Commission, and recently joined Supercars as a data analyst.

The views in this article do not necessarily express the opinions of Supercars, teams or drivers.