The Hamilton trend Bottas must halt in 2020

As we head into the final weekend of August, in any other year preparations would be under way for the traditional end-of-summer festivities. Londoners would have the Notting Hill Carnival, English cricket supporters would be getting ready for the last summer tests and Formula 1 fans would be looking forward to the Belgian and Italian grands prix.

Well, despite all that has been upturned and rerouted by the accursed COVID-19 pandemic, the last two events are going ahead on their scheduled dates. But there will inevitably be differences in 2020.

Of course, fans will sadly not be allowed to attend the races, which will run behind closed doors in line with the FIA's strict COVID-secure protocols that have been enacted so far. And the two events at Spa and Monza will not be the return to action after F1's mid-season summer break, but the end of a long slog of nine races in 11 weekends, with the inaugural Tuscan GP at Mugello then closing out a third triple header in the delayed campaign.

While everyone involved in getting the 2020 season up and running should be applauded - and given the complexities involved, thanks to F1's nomadic nature, the championship's stakeholders have done a superb job to get six races in the books, with 11 more now set to conclude the season - it has been a tough test.

"Of course we have to accept it at the moment," Max Verstappen said in Spain. "We need to get the races in, so we just try to do the best we can. We have three triple-headers in a row, so that's pretty much the limit I think."

The bustling run of races means this weekend's Belgian GP doesn't feel like a reset moment. It is a continuation of an urgent rush - a quite necessary one given the economic realities looming over F1 if it doesn't hit the required minimum number of races to avoid broadcast fee refunds. But, because the teams and drivers are at least arriving at Spa on the same weekend as usual, there is one pivotal factor to consider when it comes to the title fight.

At this precise point in each of the last three campaigns, there have been nine races left. And it is this point where the champion of those seasons has been unstoppable. Lewis Hamilton has made crushing the title run in a habit.

In 2017 and 2018 he scored five and six victories in this period, which is more (four and three respectively) than all of his rivals combined. Even in 2019, when Charles Leclerc, Sebastian Vettel, Valtteri Bottas and Verstappen managed to accrue a greater combined tally than his individual total (six vs three), he still had one more win than the next highest total (Leclerc and Bottas each managed two).

We must consider Bottas to be Hamilton's sole title rival at this stage. Verstappen is performing incredible feats for Red Bull, but he is in an undoubtedly slower car

In two of the last three years, Hamilton has delivered a superb race performance at one of the Belgian or Italian events.

In 2017, when he took control of the title run in to overturn Vettel's pre-Spa 14 point advantage, he won at the venue for this weekend's race by just staying ahead of an unexpectedly faster Ferrari package and cannily using 90% throttle on the run to Eau Rouge to stop Vettel breezing by at a late-race restart.

A year later, he took on the two Ferraris single-handedly at Monza and scored an unlikely win that must go down as one of his finest in F1. Given he's following on from a 2020 Spanish GP victory where he reached a rare "perfect zone", that's a lot of history for his title rival to consider.

PLUS: The "shock" that gave Mercedes its edge back in Spain

And, given the frankly shocking raw pace of the Mercedes W11, we must consider Bottas to be Hamilton's sole title rival at this stage. Verstappen is performing incredible feats for Red Bull, but he is in an undoubtedly slower car, and (as he and Bottas have both lost one likely second place finish to circumstances outside their control) arguably shouldn't be sitting second in the standings. It's little wonder Bottas said he could again see the championship "drifting away" after the Spanish GP.

Because that is the added difficulty of Bottas's challenge. Not only is he entering the time of year Hamilton has aced (even in 2016, he matched Nico Rosberg's win tally of four, and lost another to the Malaysian GP engine failure that led to his eventual close title defeat) but he goes into it with a 43-point deficit.

There are some key differences that may give Bottas hope. Firstly, with the returning Turkish GP, two Bahrain races and the Abu Dhabi season finale now added onto the calendar, this gives F1 2020 a title run in of 11 races, not nine. The season will likely get a total of 17 events, two more than the 15 the broadcast contracts stipulate, but those extra two are effectively acting as insurance if the pandemic's progress means more races have to be cancelled at short notice. Sadly, this cannot be ruled out.

Then there are the venues where Hamilton has never raced at before - Mugello and Algarve - although these are also new for almost everyone else as well (Hamilton raced at Imola in GP2 in 2006, while only Kimi Raikkonen remains of those who took part in the last F1 GP).

Plus, there's the Verstappen factor. There probably won't be a scarlet car blasting into the lead on the Kemmel straight this year, or surfing engine power prowess to a famous Ferrari home win at Monza, but even so the Dutchman is getting to the only level where Mercedes is threatened. If either of the Mercedes drivers slips up he will punish them - and since the season opener (where he was pretty perfect) that has just been Bottas.

While Hamilton has been seemingly serenely (one spectacular, punctured last lap at Silverstone aside) building his points advantage since his sub-par season opener, Bottas has made mistakes at key points. He wasn't helped by Mercedes' strategy in the 70th Anniversary GP defeat to Verstappen - where he was faster than Hamilton - but his start errors in Hungary and Spain have been costly, as they allowed Verstappen to get ahead and stay there.

Even if it isn't following a long break this year, Bottas must take the Spa/Monza date marker as if it were the usual reset point. And the good news he can take into this weekend is that Pirelli is returning to the C2-C3-C4 rubber that it used at the second Silverstone race, for what is another high-speed and high energy track. The bad news is those are the tyres that caused Mercedes such problems while Verstappen and Red Bull romped to their first win of the season two races ago - even if Bottas was fastesr on them.

PLUS: How ruthless Verstappen exploited Mercedes' Silverstone strength-turned-weakness

Pirelli has made the decision to go softer because the drivers basically ignored the harder tyres at Spa last year - but the forecast for this weekend seemingly removes the high temperature that was another critical factor in Mercedes' sole defeat of 2020 so far.

Rain could also play a part this weekend, and Pirelli notes that there may be an impact of the lack of the Spa 24 Hours, which normally takes place the previous month, and the absence of rubber that event would normally lay down.

There's one final factor that should encourage Bottas ahead of the Belgian GP: his form is improving at the 4.35-mile track from fifth in 2017, fourth in 2018 and third last year.

But he must find a way to take points back from Hamilton this weekend and start to reverse a trend the world champion has made his own if he is to stop another Hamilton coronation.