The Triple Eight Race Engineering driver attended the recent Sonoma round between Darwin and Townsville during a holiday to Los Angeles.
Feeney was a guest of NASCAR team RFK Racing but also met with Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen.
Feeney has long harboured stock car racing ambitions, though opportunities haven’t been forthcoming.
“I just went on a holiday. I just wanted to go check it out,” Feeney told Speedcafe.
“I [attended] Martinsville at the start of last year, so I got to go to a small kind of oval last year and watch Shane.
“I’m obviously not hiding that I’ve wanted to go do a couple of races. I’ve come close the last couple of years, but never got something together.
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“I wanted to go watch Shane, wanted to go watch him and also just float around the paddock and have a chat with a few people.
“Doing a couple of trips over there now, probably met a couple of people and just through Ford having that link with a couple of people over there.
“There was no big goal of the trip or anything like that, just watch the race, hang around, try and bump into a few people, and also have a holiday in the middle of the year, which was good.”
If an opportunity does come, it looks like it would be with RFK Racing.
Team co-owner Brad Keselowski flagged a desire in recent weeks to run a fourth car on all superspeedways and road courses.
Keselowski said he had multiple driver options but funding has been the biggest hurdle to make it happen.
“There are a lot of ways that you can do it. What’s better or not, I’m not sure,” said Feeney of whether he would fund it himself.
That would be in a similar vein to teammate Will Brown, who largely funded his NASCAR starts with support from Mobile X, Southern Cross Truck Rentals and Shaw & Partners.
“Could I raise the money to go and do a race by now? Sure,” said Feeney.
“As I said, for me, for any racing that I do I want to have an opportunity of winning and be in a very competitive car.
“Disregarding everything else – if I’m racing GTs, if I’m going to race overseas, I want it to be in a competitive car.
“I think everyone in pit lane would do a race if they could,” he added.
“In an ideal world I’d try and do a couple of road course races next year, but I know how many complications that comes with.
“A few guys have gone and done it before. It’s about the right opportunity.
“That’s the biggest thing that does stand out, you’d need to be in the right spot.”
Feeney said he was conscious of the risk associated with turning up in an uncompetitive package.
“We’ve seen with a couple of our extremely good guys go over and have a rough run just due to the equipment,” he said.
“I think right place, right time, and trying to find a competitive car is really important.
“Of course I’d love to go do some races next year, but it’s a lot easier said than done.”
The absence of a Ford team in the second-tier NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series is something of a stumbling block, though Feeney said he wouldn’t rule out a Craftsman Truck Series cameo if the right opportunity presented.
“Trying to do a Cup race is obviously a lot more expensive and a lot harder to get into, whereas the [O’Reilly Auto Parts Series] is a little bit easier to try and get into, so it makes it a little bit more difficult that they don’t have a program,” said Feeney.
“But that’s not to say that there’s not opportunities still to go and race, they’ve still got Truck Series and everything like that, so there are opportunities.
“I’d like to hope next year that I can do a few more GT races with them. I don’t think I did badly in their car at the [Bathurst] 12 hour, so hopefully more stuff comes up in the future.
“It’s just obviously hard when you come into the fold pretty late in the piece with these big factory programs.
“It’s all pretty set in stone. Hopefully a bit comes up there. For me for the rest of the year, I’ll just be racing here.”
Now it’s a matter of time for Feeney as he waits for Supercars and NASCAR to release their respective 2027 calendars.
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