It was "one hell of a ride" that had its fair share of ups and downs, a journey in which Hodges got a rare glimpse into the mind of a supercar champion.

Hodges has turned that journey into a new book that goes beyond lap times and race strategy to the mental battle coming back after such a crushing loss.

The 25-year-old was leading the championship and had clinched pole position heading into the last race of the season in Newcastle.

"He just self-destructed and lost the unloseable," Hodges said. "It was heartbreaking that he fell apart and lost the championship to Jamie Whincup. It was a bit of a disaster really."

McLaughlin describes it as one of the hardest moments of his life.

Having signed on with Dick Johnson Racing Team Penske in 2017, his season got off to a flying start.

"It was above expectations. We came into the final race with a chance to win the championship and I made a blue," McLaughlin said, admitting there were "a lot of tears".

"I said to myself before I went out that whatever happens I'm proud to even be in the fight. It still cut very deep."

A month later as Christmas was approaching, Hodges said McLaughlin was still feeling "pretty flat".

The pair started talking about writing a book. "What if we keep a diary and in 12 months time you win the whole thing and make amends," Hodges had suggested.

A self-confessed motorsport tragic, Hodges and McLaughlin have been friends since the V8 supercar champ started in the sport five or six years ago, "back when he was just a kid".

"He was the youngest ever supercar driver and he's still the youngest driver to ever win a race and now he's blossomed into this star and driving for the biggest team in the sport," Hodges said.

"No one knew about the book. He'd just sort of choked and lost his championship and couldn't be so presumptuous to keep a diary of hopefully winning it 12 months later.

"The team had ticked off on it and we followed it through the year and it came down to the last race of the year again and he was able to get the job done."

Road to Redemption, A Championship Journey, will be launched next week during the season opening V8 supercar race, the Adelaide 500.

The book recounts how McLaughlin used the negative energy from 2017's devastating loss as a springboard to claim the 2018 trophy, but behind that moment of redemption on the track was a secret weapon.

Through his appearances on AFL 360, Foxtel's number one show for which Hodges is the executive producer, McLaughlin became good mates with Richmond full-forward Jack Riewoldt.

And when Riewoldt, a huge supercars fan, watched McLaughlin "totally botch" the championship, he reached out.

He put him in touch with mindfulness coach Emma Murray who that year had helped Richmond climb from the bottom of the ladder to win the AFL premiership.

"Scott had never done any of this mindfulness. He was just a young bloke who had never told anyone about his feelings. He was really reluctant to do it, but he did it. Emma Murray was his life coach throughout 2018 and she helped him through the highs and lows of the year," Hodges said.

"It was a real rollercoaster year. The season didn't start well, then he got on a real roll and won four races in a row."

The next few races didn't go to plan and he lost the series lead, his championship charge for the season looked all but over. But by Bathurst he was back on track with a podium finish followed by a win in native New Zealand.

That led into the final race of the year in Newcastle.

"Emma Murray was by his side the whole time, even the last weekend of the year he was talking to her," Hodges said. "Twenty times he rang her from Saturday night through to Sunday morning. She was so reassuring. She was right in his camp."

McLaughlin said there was an overwhelming sense of deja vu heading into the final race. "I thought I was absolutely calm and I honestly hit an absolute wall and I was absolutely having a panic attack," he said.

"It's hard to describe the pressure. It's kind of like the grand final in some ways...but you're all on your own apart from when you come into the pits and stuff. It's pretty wild.

"She pretty much changed the way I was thinking, and helped me refocus and I've never really looked back since. I certainly want to go back and relive 2018."

And through the new book he can revisit that life-changing season. Hodges says McLaughlin was "amazingly open, raw and honest in the book". "He went to a pretty dark place after the stuff up that was Newcastle 2017," Hodges said.

The book arrived back from the printers last week, and McLaughlin spent hours at Hodges' place signing 1500 pre-ordered copies - a task that took at least two hours to sign just half.

Growing up in Warrnambool, Hodges had always wanted to be a journalist.

As a teenager he would man the phones in The Standard office on a Thursday night to write down the teams back in the day when sporting clubs would ring in their player list for publication in the next day's paper.

Hodges would also help out the sports reporters on a weekend doing stats for local games.

After moving to Melbourne to study journalism at RMIT, he became a sports reporter for Channel 10 until they lost the footy rights and he moved to Fox Footy.

"I love footy. It's work and motorsport is my passion," he said. ''I'm a motorsport tragic. I come home every year for the Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic."

McLaughlin admits that when Hodges first mentioned writing a book, he thought "they had rocks in their head".

"Thankfully it has turned out to be a really cool project," he said.

"It reaches out to lots of people who've had heartbreaking losses, whether at professional levels or club level where you've just lost a grand final by two points.

"You don't hear about it, but people do take time to recover. 

"It doesn't have to be sport related. It can be depression or anything like that, it's important that you speak up."

The brain is a muscle, and just like any other muscle and you need to train it, he said. "I don't think people put enough emphasis on it," he said.

"I was looking for that one per cent and we found it. I think she was my one per cent and still is."

In between football and race commitments, Hodges and McLaughlin plan on a trip to Warrnambool to sign copies of their book sometime this year.

Hodges also predicts big things for McLaughlin. 

"He's only 25 and the fact that he drives for Roger Penske, I don't think it will be long before he'd go to America and race full-time over there."

Penske is one of the biggest names in world motorsport and runs three Nascar and three Indy car teams as well as the supercar operation. It's a connection that allows McLaughlin, when he is in America where his fiance hails from, to sometimes fly private jets.

"It was basically love at first sight, as corny as that sounds. She's been an absolute rock to me the whole time," McLaughlin said.

When they first met in Las Vegas, McLaughlin had told her he was a mechanic. It wasn't until she became one of his 45,000 followers on instagram, just so that they could stay in touch, that she realised he was probably more than just a mechanic.