That is the message from Nick Percat ahead of the Supercars' season-opening Bathurst 500.

For the first time in 25 years Mount Panorama will play host to a Supercars sprint round, Percat and his rivals set to battle it out over a pair of 250 kilometre races.

It presents a different set of challenges to what drivers will face come October's Bathurst 1000, but Percat still can't wait to get behind the wheel.

"It's exciting, obviously it's a single driver round and we never get this place to ourselves, so from a drivers' side it's really cool," the Brad Jones Racing driver said

"The whole mentality of the event is a lot different to how we normally prepare for Octobers, so I'm looking forward to it.

"It will be interesting to see how everyone plays it and how the racing unfolds, you are going to have to be in sprint mode configuration in the way we drive the car and race."

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As the season opener is a three-day event compared to the Thursday-Sunday format of the Bathurst 1000, drivers will have just two one-hour practice sessions on Friday before Saturday qualifying.

That qualifying session runs for 20 minutes - half the amount of time given for qualifying at last year's Bathurst 1000.

It's why Percat feels a Mount Panorama lap record is not likely to be witnessed at the Bathurst 500.

"There are a few less support categories so the track won't rubber up as much and we have less practice in the lead up to qualifying," he said.

"It will be a whole new ball game. I don't know that we will see the big Hollywood lap times that we see in October as we don't have as much time to rubber the track up, but it will still be plenty entertaining.

"For me it's going to be thinking back to the Super2 days and Formula Ford days when you'd get like 20-minute, 30-minute timed practice sessions. Normally we have the luxury of building ourselves into race weekend, we are on track Thursday normally for the 1000.

"I think it's going to be pretty full on and quite demanding on the teams and drivers and engineers to get a car in that window which is fast."

Opening practices starts noon Friday.