RPW Exclusive: Alex Payne’s Eager To Win A Race On Deyo’s Tour; Tanner VanDoren Has Strong Run At All-Tech

Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – LAKE CITY, FL – Alex Payne’s hungry.

He’s hungry to grab one of Brett Deyo’s Short Track Super Series checkered flags.

Wednesday night’s Sunshine Swing ’25 opener at All-Tech Raceway was more proof of that.  However, Tanner VanDoren is just as hungry.

The Hopewell, NY driver led a handful of laps early on, fending off Stewart Friesen at the drop of Joe Kriss’ original green flag in the 30-lap feature before eventually having to settle for the runner-up spot at the end.

You can tell Payne was happy with his second-place finish, but was in no way satisfied.

“I don’t know how many times I can finish second and third on this tour and not win one,” Payne said. “This just shows the consistency of our team.”

Payne was second-fastest in his hot lap session and then went on to score the heat race victory which put him in the redraw. Lucky for him he drew the outside pole which gave him a great starting spot to try and capture the elusive STSS checkered flag, but it wasn’t to be.

“We pretty much started off where we finished last year here with the setup,” he said. “We didn’t change a whole lot and worked on our suspension package with the shocks to see if we could get a little better.”

Those changes were close but Friesen’s no. 44 was too strong on this night.

“We just made a few small changes,” he said. “Normally I feel like we’re pretty good and those adjustments and this car just felt like it was on point.”

On that early restart, Friesen made a slide job heading into turn one, bounced off the outside wall and took away Payne’s line. Tanner VanDoren snuck under the no. 70a as well and Alex had to work his way back by TVD late to grab position number two at the finish.

“If turn two was about a foot wider, I think we’d been able to clear the crossover move on Stewart,” he said. “That’s the name of the game and we’ll come back and fight just as hard tomorrow (Thursday).”

You can tell Payne wanted this one though. You can see the determination in his eyes and his feeling that one got away on this night.

“Some hard racing will change the results sometimes,” he said. “We’ve got a couple more nights here. I think we’ll get there.”

For third place finisher VanDoren, he knew his no. 27 was good all evening after winning his heat. However, redrawing eighth put him behind his closest competitors when the race was over in Friesen and Payne.

He was able to be part of the conversation for the top spot early on as he moved up quickly and was in that three-way battle for the lead when Friesen threw his slider. That got him into second and he put the pressure on the eventual winner but it never came to be.

As the race went on, Payne made the move around VanDoren again for the second spot so the Schnecksville, PA driver had to settle for third on the podium.

“It was a really good race between the three of us,” VanDoren said. “That was just good, hard racing and we had a lot of fun.”

During Tuesday night’s open practice session at All-Tech, Tanner and his team tried some different setup options to try and get their car better.

“We tried some stuff last night in practice that I’ve been wanting to try since last year,” he said. “We just didn’t get to then but it seems to work for us tonight.”

They sure did as VanDoren moved up a handful of spots rather quickly from the drop of the initial green and was in contention for the lead early on.

“Everything got screwed up on that start in turn one and I was able to roll the bottom,” he said. “I got some really good drive off the corner. I think a couple more changes and we would have been a little bit better.”

Racing continues on Thursday night for the Short Track Super Series with a 35-lap $5,000-to-win main event at All-Tech.