Arsenal has confirmed that Per Mertesacker will miss the start of the Premier League season.
The Prodrive team has put in a lot of work over the off-season in preparation for this weekend's Clipsal 500 and with just days to go before the 2017 season gets underway, they are feeling confident that they have done all their homework correctly.

There was a lot to learn during the open test day recently, and a lot of work to do to get the results to translate at a street circuit such as Clipsal.

The Adelaide Parklands Circuit is one of those events where anything can happen and it's anyone's game so for Mark Winterbottom, it will be case of getting into a good position and fighting from there.

Frosty is confident the team has a good setup direction for the new tyre but insists the differences in the circuit compared to the street layout of the Clipsal 500 will prove another challenge for drivers and engineers.

"We're ready. The test day was about four cars really looking at different setups and trying to get on top of this new tyre because if we all just did the same thing it shortens your learning curve so we got a lot out of it,” he said. “Physically as a team we're ready. We took the opportunity at the test day to practice some pit stops and we also have our pre-season training camp under our belts. Car speed is what we want for Adelaide obviously and we had one car at the test day that was able to dial it in so if we can have four cars like that in Adelaide we'll be set."

Mark will also be debuting a slightly different look on his FG X Ford at the season-opener.