Second in the Supercars Championship upon arrival to New Zealand, Feeney was 0.8567s off the pace at the conclusion of the weekend’s sole, 90-minute practice session.

This is Supercars’ first ever Taupo event and today was thus very much a journey into the unknown, with the task made even more difficult by how the track evolved during the session.

How much can be read into the timesheet remains to be seen, given the high tyre degradation and the prospect of rain tomorrow, but Feeney is not satisfied with his speed in the #88 Red Bull Ampol Camaro.

“I’m not too sure what to read into today,” he said.

“The hour-and-a-half session felt very quick, and when you look at our timesheets it doesn’t look too good unfortunately.

“We made some changes throughout the day and did a couple of race runs so I feel like we gathered a bit of information, but we have plenty we need to work on overnight.

“I think some of the other guys did a few more qualifying runs than I did, but my focus is to look at the data overnight and see where I can improve as I’m a little bit off the pace at the moment.”

On the other side of the Triple Eight garage, it was a better story for championship leader Will Brown, who ended up fifth at 0.1184s away from the benchmark time set by Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Chaz Mostert.

“It was a positive practice session overall,” said Brown.

“I think all the changes we made were a step forward and I felt pretty strong all session.

“Obviously, a couple of people who ran an extra set of green tyres pipped us at the end, but overall I think it’s definitely a top three car.

“I definitely think the rain is going to throw a bit of a curveball tomorrow, but we’ll see how we go.

“I felt pretty strong in our qualifying run midway through the session, but I think we have gains we can make after that, and with the deg being so high, the race pace is going to be the most important thing.”

Qualifying for Race 7 of the 2024 Repco Supercars Championship, the first of the weekend, starts tomorrow at 10:20 local time/08:20 AEST, with a Top 10 Shootout to follow later in the day.