Formula 1 season preview: Ferrari ready to challenge Mercedes

The new Formula 1 season will finally get underway next weekend, with the Australian Grand Prix taking place on March 26. Mercedes have been dominating this sport for the past three years, but this time it seems there are other teams that are ready to challenge their supremacy. There have been eight days of pre-season testing in Barcelona and Ferrari have managed to post the fastest times, with Mercedes not far behind and Red Bull and Williams also looking pretty good. This season could also be made a lot more interesting by the new technical regulations that will come into play. These regulations have made the cars more powerful, in fact this season's vehicles will be the fastest Formula 1 cars ever. This could lead to more spectacular races, more so if we consider that the new Pirelli tyres will be more durable and will enable drivers to stay on the track for more laps in an attempt to push their luck and change strategies in the middle of a race. The sporting regulations have also changed. The drivers will now be more in charge particularly at the start of a race, as there must now be linear control of the torque during clutch engagement, so engineers can no longer map the settings to make the clutching action optimal for the drivers. Overall, most drivers say that the new cars are more difficult to drive because they are much faster. In fact, most drivers have decided to go through extra physical training in order to withstand the increased force they feel on their bodies while driving these cars. Lewis Hamilton is odds-on favourite at Bet365 to win the 2017 drivers' championship, Sebastian Vettel is 72, while Valtteri Bottas is 5/1 to get his first world title.