Formula 1 pre-season testing: What to look out for & what has changed

Hamilton, 32, and his Mercedes team will be joined by the other nine outfits as they begin preparations with new cars designed to radically different rules.

The promise is for cars up to five seconds a lap faster, more dramatic and more demanding of the drivers.

And the hope is that at least one team can compete with Mercedes for the title after three years of domination.

However, expectations of a serious threat to the constructors' champions were dampened last week with the launch of Mercedes' new car, which drew admiring glances from both observers and rival teams.

McLaren aerodynamics chief Peter Prodromou said: "The car that has impressed me so far is Mercedes - clearly they have put a huge amount of man hours into the car."

Ferrari, like Mercedes and a handful of other teams, have already put a few miles on their new car in a so-called 'shake-down' test.

The Italian team have hopes of challenging after a winless and sometimes fractious 2016 but, for a challenge to Mercedes, most are looking at Red Bull, whose new car was unveiled to great anticipation on Sunday.

It is notoriously difficult to glean an accurate picture of form from headline lap times at pre-season testing, but we should get indications of various teams' positions.

The first task for all teams will be to run through systems checks to validate the reliability and operations of their cars. Any team who can run consistently at that stage - as Mercedes did this time last season - has a head-start on their rivals.

The large part of Red Bull's deficit to Mercedes last year was in their Renault engine. The French company has hopes of bridging the gap this year, but the engine hit reliability troubles in a 'shake-down' test with Red Bull junior team Toro Rosso on Thursday.

Mercedes, meanwhile, are said to have made their own significant step forward with their engine; a worrying sign for the rest, if true.

As the test develops, detailed analysis of lap times as the teams complete longer runs can provide a reasonably accurate picture of form.

The BBC Sport website will be providing comprehensive coverage of all eight days of pre-season testing over the next fortnight - live text commentaries, reports and analysis.

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