The past omens that could haunt Hamilton in 2018

When Lewis Hamilton won the third of his four Formula 1 world titles with three races to spare in 2015, he subsequently went off the boil - struggling to perform with the same intensity and focus that propelled him to that glory in the first place.

Hamilton lifted off the gas and allowed Nico Rosberg to win three races in a row, which handed Hamilton's arch rival some useful momentum to carry through that winter and build into a successful title charge the following season. On the evidence of the 2017 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Hamilton should be wary the ghosts of the past don't come back to haunt him.

There was a sense of deja vu about the way Hamilton's season slightly tailed off again. He won his fourth world championship with two races to spare, but hasn't tasted victory in any of the final three.

Perhaps more worrying this time around is the fact Hamilton had approached the two 'dead rubbers' of 2017 with a resolute determination not to back off - full focus and flat-out until the final race was done.

With better reliability in 2016 Hamilton could already be a five-time champion, but there's no doubt Rosberg was at his best in taking the title last season, and in promising to stay on the case to the end this time, Hamilton probably recognises the importance that late-2015 run played in Rosberg (pictured above) stealing the championship away.

Hamilton has looked potentially fast enough to win each of the final two races of this year, but has ended up winning neither. In Brazil everything was undone by that crash in Q1, but the free fresh engine he gained as a result set him up nicely for Abu Dhabi - especially considering Yas Marina is undoubtedly a power track.

But Hamilton fell short again, beaten narrowly but assuredly by Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas, who has closed out his own campaign with two successive pole positions and amassed more points over the final three grands prix than any other driver on the grid.

"It's clear that something happens once you've won the championship. The week after I won the championship I partied a lot with my family and celebrated, and that's what you do. Before all the other races, that was not the case" Lewis Hamilton

Abu Dhabi was Bottas's most convincing performance yet in Mercedes colours - easily the best of his four poles, and his first victory in a straight fight with Hamilton. Previously, Bottas's wins have come against the Ferraris, with Hamilton mired in the pack, thanks to struggles with the ultra-soft tyre in Russia, and a gearbox penalty in Austria.

But in Abu Dhabi Bottas went toe-to-toe with the world champion for the first time - Rosberg style - and came out on top. This result was the culmination of diligent work after a mid-season dip in form. In similar fashion to Rosberg at the end of 2015, Bottas has been steadily getting stronger over these final races.

He was decently fast in Japan but undone there by a grid penalty. In the United States Mercedes was impressed by his pace at certain points until he ran out of tyres towards the end. Bottas was strong in qualifying in Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi; he took pole for each of the last two.

Bottas had his killer racing instinct questioned by Toto Wolff after giving away victory to Vettel at the first corner in Brazil, but Bottas always learns from his mistakes and remains mentally strong - another Rosberg-like quality.

"The best ones are the ones that recover from bad moments," said Wolff after Bottas's Abu Dhabi success. "Maybe in a few years we will look back and say this was an important moment for his racing."

Bottas was close to faultless around the Yas Marina circuit. He described his own start as "average" but it was enough to get into the first corner leading, as Hamilton paid for being "too aggressive on the power".

"Many times I've had issues with being too keen getting on the power," admitted Bottas. "The tyres, they are so sensitive, and also the power unit - applying the power - so we made some changes for the pedal map, which really helped out here.

"Being first out of Turn 1 really allowed me to control the pace. It wasn't easy - it might have looked like we were just cruising around, but we were pushing hard with Lewis."

That was the other impressive thing about this performance - the way Bottas resisted fierce pressure from Hamilton, particularly after the pitstops. Hamilton was never more than 2.627 seconds behind Bottas through the first 20 laps, and had the gap down to barely more than a second in the early laps of the second stint.

Hamilton locked up and ran off the track at Turn 17 on lap 30 of 55 as he ramped up his chase, but only cost himself around three tenths. Bottas lost roughly the same amount when he locked up at the Turn 5/6 complex while encountering traffic. Hamilton got close under braking for Turn 7, but not close enough to attempt a pass.

Hamilton said his car balance was "spot-on" for the race, having miscued his set-up and lost crucial rear grip in qualifying, and he "gave it everything" trying to force a mistake from his team-mate, but Bottas remained resolute in his mission.

"When you're so close in pace it's so hard," rued Hamilton. "The engineers say it's a 1.4s delta you need to overtake.

"To get as close as I was shows I had good pace, but once you get within 1.2s it's like you hit a wall and the car stops. Basically, you start sliding around, all four wheels, so there was a lot of rallying today."

Nevertheless, Hamilton put the squeeze on Bottas in a concerted effort to unsettle the leading Mercedes, but Bottas resisted everything Hamilton could throw at him, trading quick laps and not making the big mistake Hamilton needed to find a way past. It was a very similar performance and outcome to the one Rosberg engineered at this race two years ago.

"Normally, under pressure I feel I perform well," said Bottas. "There were many opportunities this race I could have fucked it up.

"When you have Lewis behind, it doesn't need much and he will go for it. In the team meeting he said he was trying everything and he was waiting for that one mistake.

"The only thing that matters to me is to focus on my own stuff. I need to go corner by corner and lap by lap. I could keep my thoughts together, my head together, and it was all good."

It took Rosberg a few tries before he wasn't pressured out of the way by one of Hamilton's relentless charges, but he improved methodically in the face of repeated defeats, and that hard-earned 2015 Abu Dhabi win was Rosberg's most impressive over the final races of that season. Look what became of it subsequently.

Bottas has arguably progressed at an even quicker rate. The 2017 season was ultimately all about Hamilton versus Sebastian Vettel; Mercedes versus Ferrari, but if Bottas can put everything together next year as he did in Abu Dhabi, he will be a proper title contender in 2018 - an extra threat to Hamilton's title defence in a way Kimi Raikkonen is unlikely to be on current form.

"For me [this win] is really important, because of the struggles I had after the August break," said Bottas.

"By working hard with the team, I feel I've really managed to improve so many things with my driving, and managed to be quicker in different kinds of circumstances.

"That's the main thing and it gives me more confidence for next year. This weekend, being on the pole and winning the race, Lewis was giving everything, so that's a good feeling. It will be nice to continue that from Melbourne."

"We are not trying to build a new family here. An effective racing team needs stress, needs tension, needs disruption, as much as it needs calmness" Toto Wolff

Whether he can will all depend on how successful Bottas is at ironing out his residual weaknesses over the winter, and how well Hamilton regroups after a slightly flat end to this campaign.

Wolff said afterwards "I don't think 2015 has happened [again]" with regards to Hamilton's limp finish, and certainly Hamilton doesn't seem to have backed off to quite the same extent this time around. He continued to work hard and was properly fast in both Brazil and Abu Dhabi. But perhaps that's more concerning - that he tried that much harder and still came up short?

"There's zero concern," Hamilton insisted. "I think it's clear that something happens once you've won the championship.

"All I can say is, the week after I won the championship I partied a lot with my family and celebrated, and that's what you do. I can tell you that before all the other races, that was not the case.

"So, sleep, energy, has definitely been different these last couple of races. But nonetheless I still tried to approach them the same. But if you don't prepare the same, there's no way [you're going to perform the same].

"I'm not bothered about that. Next year that will go back to how it was in the second half of this season."

Hamilton will certainly need to come out firing on all cylinders again, and must also consider how the positive internal dynamic within Mercedes may shift as Bottas becomes more confident and more competitive.

Hamilton and Bottas clearly get on as team-mates in a way Hamilton and Rosberg did not, but it's much easier for Hamilton to be magnanimous in defeat when he's already champion. Will things change if Bottas uses this result as a springboard to a championship charge next year?

Probably not, so long as there are no games off-track, which will help maintain Hamilton's equilibrium. But we also don't know how Bottas will behave if he gets properly into the fight, and what new (or old) challenges that could pose for Mercedes.

"I don't think we need to avoid a stressful situation," said Wolff.

"We are not trying to build a new family here - we want to be the most effective racing team, and an effective racing team needs stress, needs tension, needs disruption, as much as it needs calmness and a positive attitude and mindset. Like everywhere in life, you want to have the mix of both."

Ferrari would have hoped to be in the mix to finish its own season in style here, after Vettel's triumph in Brazil. But Vettel was more than half a second slower than Bottas in qualifying and couldn't live with the two Mercedes in the race either, though he at least closed the deficit to an average of 0.3s per lap, despite the need for Ferrari to aggressively save fuel.

"The first two laps were pretty good, I was able to follow and I thought, 'OK, I can stay with them'," said Vettel, who locked up at Turn 1 after the start and flat-spotted his first set of tyres "a tiny bit".

"The section around [Turns] 5, 6, 7 - they were faster than us all weekend. In the last sector, they were [also] very strong, so even if Lewis had to follow Valtteri closer than I was to Lewis, he was still faster than me in the last sector. I think that's where it got away.

"In the final stint on the super-soft, overall we were more competitive - I felt happier with the car, but those two in front, they were able to just go faster with the fuel going down. That's something I couldn't do.

"We got a fair beating and couldn't touch them in qualifying and in the race, so obviously there is lots for us to do better."

Which is true for all Bottas's rivals on the basis of his Abu Dhabi performance. Formula 1 ushered in a 'new era' with the launch of its not universally well-received new official logo in Abu Dhabi. Perhaps the final race of 2017 will usher in a new era for Valtteri Bottas too.

If he can harness the lessons of these final races in the way his predecessor did two years ago, there could be a very different complexion to this championship in 2018.

"We are going to go through everything from this season before Christmas - the main points we need to improve and my main weaknesses especially," said Bottas. "Then again in January, the same process continues.

"I'm still trying to make my weaknesses none. That's always the target. It's never possible, but you can always try to be near-perfect. I'm going to work harder than ever this winter, and hopefully I can be better than ever next year."

Hamilton already has enough to worry about with the resurgence of Vettel and Ferrari, even though the Scuderia suffered an unfortunate blip in Abu Dhabi, and there is the irrepressible rise of Max Verstappen to contend with too.

With Bottas also on the up after his first year of grace with Mercedes, Hamilton will very much hope the Rosberg omens of 2015 do not come back to trouble him again.