I will need to re-do this at some point, but the poster below shows the favourites (based purely on 2015 performance) for the 2017 World Solar Challenge (click to zoom). There is a very interesting mix of designs this year! For more details, see my annotated list of teams.
Scientific Gems 
You don’t feel Stanford with their strong performances should be in the list? Or did you want to keep it at 5 Challengers for now?
Basically it’s just the top 5 from 2015 (I only had room for 5 + 3). But Stanford is certainly worth watching, and I mentioned them here.
Stanford is also on my dark horse list.
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Im concerned about Twente, looks like the didn’t really move forward body wise while everyone else took a massive leap.
Well, Twente stuck with Silicon cells (unlike Nuon and Punch), which means a larger area all up. But if you look at my dimensions post, you can see that they opted for “long and narrow” (like Stanford). More of an evolutionary than a revolutionary design, I guess. We’ll see how it works out in the race!