A scary crash by Kiwi Supercars star Scott McLaughlin has put an early end to qualifying at the Gold Coast 600.

McLaughlin, who is on track for a second straight Supercars title after a stellar 2019 season, flipped his car into fence, prompting red flags and an early end to the qualifying session.

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.

"I just want to thank Shane for pulling up … and seeing if I was alright. I want to say thanks to him.

"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."

Van Gisbergen explained his reaction.

"It's not a nice feeling coming around the corner and seeing one of your mates on the 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."