Scott McLaughlin continued to set the pace as the soft tyres made their Clipsal 500 Adelaide debut in second practice.

McLaughlin took more than a second from his morning time, recorded on the hard tyres, to stop the clocks at 1:19.70s half an hour into the 40 minute session.

Initially 0.5s clear of the field, the Volvo proved able to fend off a succession of late challengers led by Red Bull’s Jamie Whincup and Shane van Gisbergen.

Whincup fell just 0.05s short of the top spot, with Van Gisbergen a further 0.07s adrift in third.

McLaughlin, who remains winless since November, 2014, heads into the afternoon’s qualifying sessions confident that his Volvo will be highly competitive on both tyres.

“I feel like last year we were lucky that our car was good on both compounds,” he said.

“That’s what it felt like again today. I had a few little moments on the soft tyre trying to find the limits, but all in all it was good fun.

“There’s always something a bit extra in myself. I’m losing out a bit in the third sector. The car itself is pretty good, but we’ll tune the driver up and we’ll be right.”

Mark Winterbottom showed promise for Prodrive in fourth after a low key opening practice for the four-car Ford squad.

Having run old rubber in Practice 1, Winterbottom and team-mate Chaz Mostert set the early hard tyre pace in the second session before the softs came out at the halfway mark.

“The car is getting better as the day goes on,” said Wintebottom.

“The soft tyre is really weird because at Turn 8, it’s normally 220km/h and the data tells you you can do 230km/h on the soft.

“You know it can happen but your head and your foot have a bit of an argument. I lost a bit of time there, but the soft tyres are really good to drive on.”

James Courtney and Rick Kelly continued their strong morning form in fifth and sixth respectively, while Jason Bright, Scott Pye, Tim Slade and Garth Tander completed the top 10.

Result: V8 Supercars Clipsal 500 Practice 2