McLaughlin the quickest in practice

It is advantage to Scott McLaughlin in this weekend’s battle with Shane van Gisbergen for the 2018 Supercars title.

In the second practice session at the Newcastle street circuit, McLaughlin was the fastest driver, completing a lap in 1:10.476, second was Jamie Whincup and third was Cameron Waters, with Fabian Coulthard fourth.

Van Gisbergen was only the seventh quickest, 0.36 seconds slower than McLaughlin.

While it’s only practice it does continue the trend from the Sunday at Pukekohe three weeks ago, when van Gisbergen didn’t have the same pace as his Kiwi rival.

‘‘All day we just stuck to our normal thing and it worked really well, so I’m pretty happy,’’ McLaughlin said after practice.

The external pressure on McLaughlin is intense this week, particularly as he lost the title in the final race in Newcastle last year.

But now McLaughlin is into race mode, he’s just trying to go about his business as he usually does.

‘‘If we can just keep doing what we’re doing, no different to what we’ve done, we should be in an OK position at the end,’’ he said.

While McLaughlin does have a narrow 14-point advantage over van Gisbergen in the championship, he says his mentality this week is to think of himself as being level pegging with the 2016 Supercars champion.

‘‘I’m basically just pretending we’re on equal points, we’re both starting on zero and going after it.’’

For Coulthard to be fourth quickest is another positive for McLaughlin, as he’ll need his teammate to be up near the front over the weekend, mixing it with the Triple Eight cars.

‘‘At this stage, it’s just me focusing on my job, but anytime Fabian is right there it’s good for me,’’ McLaughlin said.

‘‘Any time he’s right there it’s good and last year, we had a one-two and hopefully we can replicate that.’’

Although van Gisbergen was the seventh quickest, he wasn’t disappointed about what he achieved over the sessions.

‘‘Today was all right, it was a good day,’’ he said.

‘‘It’s very challenging with the wind and that was a variable that everyone had to deal with.’’

Richie Stanaway caused damage to his Ford Falcon, by sliding into the wall at turn seven, which required a rear spoiler change and he ended up the 24th quickest.

The other New Zealander, Andre Heimgartner, was the 14th fastest, while Lee Holdsworth was the quickest in the earlier session.

‘‘Overall, it wasn’t a terrible day,’’ Heimgartner said.

‘‘We were close to the top 10 in the second session, and we were inside the top 10 in the first session.’’

‘‘Both sessions were really close, and we did a few tunes and for the first time at the track, it’s not too bad. We’ll have a play tonight and see what we can do for tomorrow.

‘‘They are long races, but qualifying is important because it’s pretty hard to pass, so to get that good track position is going to be pretty vital.’’