Drivers predicting mixed results at Hidden Valley

Changing compounds for the second race and second qualifying session of the day will jumble the order of the field - that's the word from the SKYCITY Triple Crown.

Heading into the event, V8 Supercars allocated an extra set of soft Dunlop tyres for Saturday to inject action into the 60km sprint after calls for a format change.

According to Nissan team boss, driver and Commission member Todd Kelly, the change to soft tyres for the second race and qualifying session has multiple benefits, throwing a new challenge at the teams and drivers and giving an indication of what components make a good V8 Supercars sprint race.

"It's a good thing - it'll mix it up a fair bit because you wouldn't normally get the same group of people qualifying in the same spot in both those races when you've gone from a hard tyre to a soft tyre. And mixing it up is probably one of the key things that can generate good racing," Kelly told v8supercars.com.au.

"It also gives us a really good opportunity to back-to-back two identical races on two [different] tyres to see what it does produce at a race as well ... it just builds our knowledge base as to what the best direction is to head for the future and for next year."

The softer compound is favoured among the drivers, who enjoy the extra grip it produces.

"I love racing on the soft tyre and in particular love qualifying on the soft tyre," Kelly, who is a three-time race winner at Hidden Valley and Bathurst 1000 winner, said.

"You can really get stuck into the driving and drive as hard as you possibly can rather than trying to drive to the tyre so much - which is more like you do on the hard - so I look forward to it."

Holden Racing Team's James Courtney, who sits fifth in the Championship, agreed the back-to-back running would be tight but ultimately it will create a spectacle today.

"There's not going to be much time in between to do big setup changes ... but it's going to be the same for everyone, so it's just going to be a matter of finding a good compromise setup for both," he told v8supercars.com.au.

"I think it's good, everyone's going to enjoy racing on the soft tyre - ask anyone up and down our pit lane what tyre they want to drive on, they're going to want to drive on the soft."

While the Prodrive Falcons proved strong on the soft compound yesterday, third placed Fabian Coulthard had only run the hard tyre.

The last driver to appear in the top three in practice running a hard tyre, while competitors ran the soft was Craig Lowndes in Tasmania - and he went on to dominate the weekend.

Coulthard believes the back-to-back qualifying format always throws up different results, and shrugged off the impact of switching compounds for each run.

"Back-to-back qualifying is pretty standard - we've done that a fair bit this year with only the 10 minute gap - so I think it'll mix up the order. It's proven a few times this year it can achieve that," he said.

"It's pretty straight forward really, I don't think it'll be a big drama," he said of the amended format.

"We're all in the same boat, we're all dealing with the same challenges of having a short turnaround time."

He and engineer Phil Keed used yesterday to work on hard tyre pace and will use the soft tyre on his new Freightliner Commodore in this morning's practice session.

"We've been doing most of our running to work on our weaknesses, weaknesses of running on the hard tyre," he said.

"We're not confident enough to just go into qualifying without using the soft tyre, so we'll use it at some point and see how the car performs and if we've got the ability to tune it we will.

"But generally speaking our car performs well on the soft tyre."

Coverage begins at 9am EST today on FOX SPORTS 506, with Race 13 at 2.55pm and 5.15pm. Highlights will air on ONE at 8.30pm.