The eight-time grand prix winner is now linked to Ford through the carmaker's recently-announced deal with Red Bull.

As part of his third driver duties Ricciardo spent the day at Ford's HQ where he sampled a number of cars on Ford's test track.

Among them was a DJR Team Penske-built Gen2 Ford Mustang Supercar which is based at Ford HQ and often driven by Ford CEO Jim Farley in demonstration runs.

"I've driven pretty much every Ford under the sun and just got out of this bad boy right here," said Ricciardo in a social media video for Ford Performance.

"Bit of Aussie in me. A little bit of a V8 Supercars here in Michigan – which is far from home, but I felt at home in it.

"It was a lot of fun. A big thanks to Ford for having me out here."

This was the third time Ricciardo has sampled an Aussie V8 racer, following earlier outings in Triple Eight's unique Sandman Supercar at Sandown back in first stint as a Red Bull driver, and laps in Rick Kelly's Nissan Altima at Calder during his time at Renault.

It is also the latest instance of a Formula 1 driver in a Supercar after Fernando Alonso drove a Tickford Mustang and Sergio Perez a Triple Eight Commodore at Albert Park during the Australian Grand Prix weekend last year.

Feeney predicts "crazy" Supercars opener

Broc Feeney is predicting a "crazy" opening round to his sophomore Supercars season thanks to the debut of the new Gen3 cars.

A full field of Gen3 Ford Mustangs and Chevrolet Camaros will debut on the streets of Newcastle next month.

They will do so under a cloud of uncertainty as well with delays to the development process meaning teams have only started testing in the last week.

Some teams are yet to turn a wheel with a Gen3 car yet with the likes of Team 18, Erebus Motorsport, Walkinshaw Andretti United and Brad Jones Racing still completing their first builds.

Triple Eight hit the track for the first time with its race cars today with Shane van Gisbergen and Feeney both shaking down their Camaros at Queensland Raceway.

That was only after a late scramble for the team to prepare the two Camaros, plus a third Camaro fielded by customer team PremiAir Racing.

Having seen the rush to get the cars ready for testing, Feeney reckons there is more madness ahead as the team works through its testing programme ahead of the Newcastle 500.

And he is predicting it will continue once the season starts as well, Feeney expecting the first two races in Newcastle to be "crazy".

"It was pretty exciting this morning driving in," he said of the shakedown. "We're still working on some comfort for me inside [the car], it's very different to the last couple of cars so we're building up to it. But it's been good so far.

"The next 30 days are going to be crazy to get to Newcastle. I know how hard the team has been working, day and night, to get to this day. And we've still got quite a while to get to the first round.

"I'm looking forward to it; another couple of test days building on today. We're learning as much as we can today to maximise the next couple of days we've got.

"Newcastle is going to be crazy. If you expect it to be the same as normal you're a dreamer. It will be pretty wild.

"We're all looking forward to it because we don't know what to expect. We've got to put a lot of work in eliding up to it, and throughout the year, to make sure we try and stay at the top."