"We'll go to Pukekohe, but we'll only see him for 10 or 15 minutes a day. He's got a tight schedule with sponsor commitments and engineering commitments, and then he has to actually race the car and get it up the front."
Wayne McLaughlin has been a major force in the young driver's rise to the top of the Supercars championship, and in supporting his ambitions since Scott took up motorsport as a six-year-old in Hamilton.
"We went to a car show at Claudelands and they were advertising a have-a-go day on the karts. So we took him out and he took to it like a duck to water. We bought him a cart for his 7th birthday. It started off as a bit of a hobby, but then he won his first trophy. He slept with that for three nights. He's a natural," Wayne says.
Wayne reckons that by the age of 13 his son was committed to motorsport. The family shifted to Australia for a time and while Wayne had been fully supportive till then, he reckoned it was time for others to take Scott to the next level.
"So we enlisted a guy called Robbie Morton. He mentored and developed Scott. He disciplined him far more than what a father could do.
"Another good Kiwi guy Dale Verrall was very instrumental as well. In 2008, we set up a van and did 35 race meetings in a year, four of them in New Zealand. He went to Italy for the world karting finals."
But while karting is an introduction to motorsport, it's time to move on when you're in the middle teenage years. The future Supercars star didn't do any intermediate step.
"He went from karts straight to V8s," says his dad.
"I wasn't keen on Scotty doing Formula Ford and he's never had an interest in open wheelers. With the help of Jimmy Stone, he did some work experience at Stone Brothers (racing team) and then they decided to give him a go."
It was a test drive at Queensland Raceway in late 2009 that showed how much potential the then 16-year-old had.
"Jimmy Stone said if he can break into the 1.14s around here, we'll give him a drive. So he went out and did seven laps in a row at about 1.13.7. So he's got a drive."
It wasn't cheap though.
"It was $580,000 to do the 12 months. Basically we had a blank canvas so it was up to us to sell the car. We were just fortunate that we had a really good business that would support him, but we had really great support from sponsors too."
The investment paid off. In 2012, Scott McLaughlin won the second tier V8 Supercar Development series and was ready to take the step to the big leagues, the V8 Supercars Championship.
"Gary Rogers wanted Scott to race for him the next year, but he wanted Scott to finish his apprenticeship as well. He was an apprentice fitter and turner so there was some good old fashioned family discipline there to keep him grounded."
The Gary Rogers team's faith in the teenager was quickly repaid. McLaughlin won the sixth race of the 2013 series at Pukekohe to become the youngest race winner in V8 history.
Gary Rogers Motorsport switched from Holden to Volvo in 2014 and it was McLaughlin who made the fans take note of the new cars in the series.
He had a famous duel with five time Supercars champion Jamie Whincup at Adelaide before giving his infamous explanation afterwards.
"I just plucked her in first, gave it some jandal and (expletive) yeah!"
Watching on TV back here, the old man thought it was hilarious.
"Yeah, the jandal. I'll never forget that day. The F-bomb live on TV, I thought 'oh my God'," he laughs.
"But he put Volvo on the map really."
Scott's progression in Supercars racing has been one of generally steady improvement. He was fifth in the championship in 2014, slipped back to eighth in 2015 before moving to third in 2016.
Then last year he was in pole position to make the breakthrough and win his first Supercars title. He won the first race of the final weekend in Newcastle and took a 78-point lead over Jamie Whincup into Sunday's finale.
"He only had to finish in the top five and it was looking pretty strong. There was a lot of confidence around the pits on the Saturday night," says his father.
But on the Sunday, what could go wrong did go wrong.
"He had to take a drive-through penalty, that's sort of gut wrenching. Then he got tangled up with Simona (de Silvestro) and that was a clear faux pas on Scott's behalf and he had to pay a penalty for that."
Worse was to come. He had a mishap with Craig Lowndes and eventually finished 18th in the race. Whincup won, took 150 points while McLaughlin scored only 51.
McLaughlin's 78-point lead had evaporated and he finished 21 points behind Whincup.
Dad is still philosophical about that day.
"In motor racing the highs always outweigh the lows."
So with just a 14-point lead that his son takes into today at Pukekohe, and the expectations of a home crowd for the fan favourite, how will Wayne and Diane be reacting when the first of the weekend's 70 lap races starts at 4.10pm today?
"Oh we're totally shocking. His mum and I, we pace around, especially for the first three laps. Then once they settle into the race your nerves calm a bit, but it never really changes.
"Look, it's going to be a tight weekend. But it's good to see two Kiwi boys battling it out. There's a lot of respect between Scotty and Shane. They race each other as hard as can be, but at the end of the day one of them will give.
"Hopefully, the right one."
