But an incredible moment came when McLaughlin's Red Bull rival Shane van Gisbergen stopped immediately when he saw the crash and ran down the track to check on the health of his fellow Kiwi driver.
McLaughlin walked away from the crash with only minor injuries, but he won't be competing for the rest of the weekend.
"My motherhood is hurting and my heart but that's it," McLaughlin said later. "I'm just terribly sorry for everyone in the team."
Shane van Gisbergen runs to check on Supercars rival Scott McLaughlin. Photo / Sky
McLaughlin thanked his rival van Gisbergen for checking up on him on the track.
In March, McLaughlin lifted the lid on his feud with van Gisbergen in his book, Road to Redemption - referring to an incident during last year's stop in Pukekohe that rubbed McLaughlin the wrong way as the two were locked in a fierce battle for the overall title.
"I just want to thank Shane for pulling up … and seeing if I was alright. I want to say thanks to him," McLaughlin said on Sunday.
"It all happened so fast … I was more worried about people hitting my roof than I was about [the crash].
"Thankfully we've got a great car. Everyone does in Supercars. And we're safe. And people will learn from this incident and hopefully, we can make safety even better for the next few years."
Scott McLaughlin's mangled car. Photo / Getty
Van Gisbergen explained his reaction.
"It's not a nice feeling coming around the corner and seeing one of your mates on their side. It must have been a big shunt, so I helped him out. But the medical team were there fast. I saw him get out, he was pretty shaken, but he was alright, not nice.
"It's irrelevant who it was, when I first saw it I just wanted to get there and help, you would do it for anyone in the field. Wasn't a good thing, it was shocking."
McLaughlin's co-driver Alex Premat said it was an "unfortunate" incident but was thankful his colleague was safe.
"It's a pretty bad incident, but fortunately Scotty is alright so he could jump out of the car, that's the main thing," said Premat.
"It's bad ending the day like this, but it's motor racing. He did the best at what he could do, we didn't see what happened because we didn't have so much onboard.
"It's very unfortunate, but all that matters is Scotty is out of the car.
"We need to see when the car is back here what we can do, how bad it is, but the whole team will be making sure everything is back together, either today or at Sandown."
