McLaughlin's phantom Monza penalty

The DJR Team Penske star romped out to an early lead in the virtual series, taking two wins from three opening-round races at Phillip Island and Monza.

The second of those wins, however, came as somewhat of a surprise.

Having made contact with teammate Fabian Coulthard at the Parabolica midway through the race, McLaughlin was left under the impression he'd been hit with a five second.

But there was neither an in-game penalty applied, or one applied by driving standards advisor Craig Baird.

The most likely suspect for the confusion is a miscommunication through McLaughlin's popular Twitch account, which had more than 5000 live viewers at times during Wednesday night's broadcast.

"I've got a five-second penalty," he reported to engineer Richard Harris with 11 laps to go.

"We'll pull away, we'll be right. Sorry about that."

However the misunderstanding came about, it left McLaughlin and Harris thinking they were fighting for second, not the race win.

They spend the second half of the race managing both fuel and the gap to Chaz Mostert, hoping to nab second place.

At the start of the final lap the gap was 4.2s, McLaughlin managing to eke it out to 5.050s by the finish line.

While initially celebrating what he thought was a hard-earned second, there was a period of confusion on the cool-down lap as the reigning Bathurst winner learned that the broadcast was reporting he was the race winner.

It wasn't until he was directed to conduct a post-race interview that it was clarified that he was in fact the winner.

The two wins have given McLaughlin an early series lead, the Bathurst winner holding a 44-point advantage over Cam Waters.

The Supercars All Stars Eseries continues with races at Silverstone and Barcelona next Wednesday night.

The entire season will be streamed live and free by Motorsport.tv.