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Nick Payne was resolute in advance of the Daytona 500.
The fourth-year spotter of the 23XI Racing No. 45 team needed to do some soul searching too. It’s been well-documented that Tyler Reddick and Billy Scott did some reflecting over the winter to better understand what produced a winless season one year after a three-win final four appearance.
Payne wanted them to know he was working too. It’s no secret in the NASCAR Cup Series garage that the first change a team makes if one is necessary is the intermediary between the driver and crew chief.
Reddick called Payne a few weeks ago and just wanted to check in. ‘Something seemed off.’ That was the general prompt for the conversation.
“I told him, ‘hey man, I am just really locked in’ and ‘I am just really focused on this season,’ because last year was tough,” Payne told Motorsport.com over the phone on Tuesday. “At some point, we really have to figure out what the issue is and I want to be able to prove to everyone at AirSpeed that I am giving it everything I have to win every single weekend.
“I told him I might seem different. I’m not going to be as lighthearted as usual. I just want to focus and lock in. I want to go (and) win the Daytona 500. We have to win.”
Payne was blunt. He told Reddick that ‘it’s different for you’ because the driver is always the last to go and usually after different things have been tried with the spotter, crew chief and engineering corps, ‘everyone that works at AirSpeed.’
“I just told Tyler, I need to lock in and we’re going to do this,” Payne said. “We are going to prove ourselves and I might look different for a little while but I am just focused. No distractions. That’s been my head space.”
Last season was tough. Reddick was dealing with his newborn, Rookie, battling a tumor. 23XI Racing was embroiled in a legal fight alongside Front Row Motorsports against the Sanctioning Body. All told, Payne said he doesn’t believe what derailed them was any one thing that any single person is responsible for but he did not want to experience that twice.
Rookie is doing much better and the lawsuit was settled in a positive fashion for 23XI. Now, in the very first and very biggest race of the year, Payne and the 23XI Racing No. 45 are back in Victory Lane and leading the early championship standings.
“We have the best people here and we are all fit to do the jobs we’ve been assigned,” Payne said. “This sport is just tough and everything has to work out perfectly. Daytona is a prime example of that — we have to execute all day and be a little lucky too.
“But those feelings about your place in the sport and the team, they do creep in. They always do. It’s human. If you worry about something, it means you care, so if you are never job scared at some point, they you simply aren’t trying hard enough. Last year was a motivator to keep going.”
So, when you see the videos of Payne in Victory Lane, emotional and slouched over, that’s part of the reason. It’s also the culmination of a lifelong dream and one that everyone in racing has. He’s been established as a young but successful Cup Series team member with a victory in the Great American Race.
In the immediate aftermath of winning the race, he was mobbed by some of his fellow spotters, including a first bear hug by Joe Gibbs Racing No. 19 spotter Drew Herring. The respect of his peers means a lot to him because such respect is hard to come by at first on top of that stand.
Tyler Reddick wins the Daytona 500 as Chase Elliott, Riley Herbst, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. crash
Photo by: James Gilbert / Getty Images
Reddick asked five times if they won but Payne was being mobbed. Scott’s headset was in the infield grass somewhere as they started to celebrate. Payne was able to eventually confirm to his driver that they won.
He busted his knee, scraped the skin off ‘because the material up there is not very forgiving’ and that was before running downstairs and trying to make his way to Victory Lane. He needed to find his dad first, Paul, who wasn’t in the infield. ‘I needed to sneak him across the gate,’ and got lost for 15-20 minutes trying to navigate the World Center of Racing.
“Anyone who has been to Daytona knows how easy it is to get lost.”
But he got there. There were hugs and congratulations amongst the 45 team. Riley Herbst and Corey Heim congratulated him. Michael Jordan congratulated him too. Then came the moment when he collapsed in Victory Lane.
“That’s just the moment where it finally hits you and you just have a moment to sit there and realize this is real,” Payne said. “The weirdest thing I ever experienced in life is, realizing this is the probably the best day of my life, and I just need to sit there and accept it and say, I don’t know if it’s ever going to get better than this right here and really tried to embrace it.”
But winning the biggest race of the year doesn’t mean all those winter mission statements and self-reflections are moot. There is still much to validate and it’s actually easier for Payne to refocus because the next race is the hardest one of the year for those atop the spotter stand, Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Payne, Reddick and Scott had their first quiet team lunch today since winning and it was the first moment where the page started to turn. He says Reddick is a momentum racer and he is at his best when he has wind to his back.
“Don’t let us get hot,” Payne said twice during this phone call.
Atlanta is now a diet superspeedway of sorts and the spotter is even more important there than at Daytona. So it’s even more important for Payne to lock-in even fresh off the Great American Race.
“At Daytona, there’s so many down moments,” Payne said. “When you are three and four-wide saving fuel, we’re kind of just there. I’m just watching and might as well be a fan in the stands at that point.
“If you go to Atlanta and even fall asleep for two seconds with a guy at your right rear, you’re going to 30th in no time. It’s a different mentality. You have to stay switched on. You have to be well-prepared and you have to understand where the runs are always coming from and more importantly, which ones you want to take.”
Make no mistake, this week is a really good week for Payne, but he’s even more focused now on making this the start to a really good season.
“The walk off win moments, they’re not everything in the way they used to be. Third place and a lot of stages points are a really big day if that’s what we have to accept after starting the year with a win.
“That’s where our focus is. We want to win races but we want to win a championship now too.”
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