Feeney was delivered a 15-second penalty for an unsafe release during the final sequence of pit stops after tagging the front bumper of Mostert’s car.
The Mobil1 Optus Racing driver bemoaned damage to his car as a result of the contact and said he thought the Red Bull Ampol Racing driver could have achieved the 15-second lead he needed to overcome.
With less than 20 laps remaining, Walkinshaw Andretti United engineer Sam Scaffidi told Mostert to let Feeney through.
Mostert acknowledged the message but raced Feeney hard in a bid to “cook’ the tyres on the #88 Chevrolet Camaro.
Then, with 16 laps to go, Feeney showed his nose at Turn 6 and tipped Mostert into a spin.
Feeney was given another 15-second penalty, taking his total penalty time to 30 seconds.
Will Brown, who was third on the road, caught and passed Mostert in a few laps and took the effective lead of the race. All told, Feeney dropped to seventh.
Asked whether he thought he could get a 15-second lead had he got by Mostert, Feeney told Fox Sports’ Chad Neylon, “I don’t know about 15 seconds up the road.
“But my engineer told me that they [WAU] told Chaz pretty much to let me go. As soon as I heard that, I started showing the nose and I wasn’t sure if he was going to let me go or not.
“That’s what happened at Turn 9. My engineer, he told me two corners before, so I went mid-track to see what he would do. But he was obviously pretty keen to still race.
“Initially, into the staircase, I got up beside but when he started turning back in I tried to back out and that’s when I tagged him.
“As I said, my complete mistake. I was gutted to see him not win that race even though Will ended up winning it.
“Not the way we obviously go racing but for me, I raced hard this weekend. I’m proud of the pace we had. We’re going to have to be fast next year.
“My team has done a great job this weekend. For sure we made some mistakes, but we win and lose together as a team and we certainly learned that this weekend.”
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Feeney said he was “super disappointed” in himself and apologised to Mostert immediately after the race concluded.
“Obviously extremely sorry to him and his team what I took away from those guys I can’t give back to them,” saif Feeney.
“Obviously, a lot of things went wrong in our race. I suppose I was a bit too aggressive. I was trying to get to the lead and try and extend my 15-second gap and I made a mistake and tagged him. I went and apologised to him and his engineer Scaff.
“Chaz was all right. But yeah, disappointed. We were bloody fast out there. We can make the mistakes today but we won’t be able to afford that next year.”
Feeney wound up second in the championship behind teammate Brown. Mostert, meanwhile, was third.
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