How Red Bull's task to beat Mercedes just got harder

"We also want to pay tribute to our incredible partners in the Americas and look forward to being back with them next season when they will once again be able to thrill millions of fans around the world."

Chase Carey's words above acknowledged that in 2020, Formula 1 will not be visiting the Americas. The US, Mexican and Brazilian races are cancelled because of the ongoing and unpredictable nature of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the decision seems understandable given the challenges the wretched coronavirus continues to create, it will have come as a bitter blow to F1 fans in those countries, as well as fans that enjoyed the racing at the Circuit of the Americas, the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez and Interlagos, all three fine tracks. And there will surely too be one team that is now hurting from their absence: Red Bull.

In the last three years, Red Bull has enjoyed considerable success in the Americas, with Max Verstappen winning in Mexico in 2017 and 2018, and last year in Brazil, where he lost another likely triumph the previous season in that clash with Esteban Ocon. The considerable altitude of the Mexican and Brazilian circuits - particularly the former at 2,250m - is clearly a factor, with the suspected smaller Honda turbo thought to be of particular assistance.

It was already known that Monaco and Singapore would not be appearing in this most-unusual of seasons, but that knowledge won't be of any comfort to Red Bull. These were two tracks where it should have been able to get closer to Mercedes, as it should have been able to do last time out in Hungary before it unexpectedly fell considerably short.

PLUS: Why Hungarian GP was a race to recover from embarrassing errors

The field's historical form at tracks on the rest of the 2020 calendar, as it stands now, makes for pretty grim reading for any team other than Mercedes. At the venue for the next two rounds, Silverstone, Mercedes has only lost once in the hybrid era - in 2018 when Sebastian Vettel triumphed ahead of Lewis Hamilton (who was forced to battle back to second after a clumsy clattering courtesy of Kimi Raikkonen).

At Barcelona - now surely under considerable threat given the rise in coronavirus cases in Catalonia, even if F1 insists otherwise - the only non-Mercedes win since 2014 is Verstappen's maiden F1 win in 2016, which came after the Hamilton-Nico Rosberg lap one shunt.

Spa makes for better reading, but the deciding factor in the last two years - Ferrari's engine prowess - is now gone (Red Bull did win in Belgium, currently discussing its own potential new pandemic restrictions, in 2014 - again, after a Hamilton-Rosberg clash).

The same engine factor was behind Ferrari giving Mercedes its only V6 turbo era defeat at Monza last year, and while the Scuderia should have inflicted the first Mercedes defeat at the Russian GP with that power advantage last year, Ferrari managed to lose a race it had been leading 1-2.

So, Red Bull cannot take heart from recent history, but the new venues on the calendar - Mugello, the Nurburgring, the Algarve and Imola - have a freshness factor that may give Mercedes an issue. The trouble is, the team looks so dominant right now that may not be enough...

With the tracks where it has been historically 'weak' (it's all relative) gone, Mercedes' path to the titles got that much easier and Red Bull's got harder

When the 2020 season finally got underway, it was hoped that Red Bull would take the fight to Mercedes. The team was confident Verstappen could've exploited Mercedes' gearbox sensor gremlins with his contra-strategy had he not retired early in the Austrian GP - where Alex Albon also came close to taking an undeserved (in the sense he was only in play because of late-race safety cars) win - but in the two races since the team has been found wanting.

Red Bull must get on top of the RB16's aerodynamic "anomalies" team boss Christian Horner admitted to after the Hungarian race. And it must show progress at Silverstone - another effective home event given the proximity of the team's Milton Keynes base.

"Hats off to Mercedes, they have developed a competitive car and we are going to have to go some to catch them but that is the focus of the whole team," Horner wrote in his post-Hungary blog on the team's website.

"We have to address the issues we have but I think RB16 has the makings of a very good car, we just have to make sure we extract the full performance and fix the handling issues."

If it doesn't, F1 2020 is at risk of being a Mercedes walkover, which hasn't completely happened since the start of 2017. Mercedes has lost at least two races in each of the last six seasons (with just two losses its best return, in 2016), but on current form it's hard to see where those defeats are coming from this year.

Other than the reliability drama in the season opener, Mercedes hasn't looked like it will be giving away any freebies. And with the tracks where it has been historically 'weak' (it's all relative) gone, Mercedes' path to the titles got that much easier and Red Bull's got that much harder.

For the sake of a close fight for the 2020 drivers' crown, F1 needs Valtteri Bottas to hit back at Hamilton this weekend. The worry on this front is the manner of his defeat in Hungary, where a familiar weakness relative to Hamilton cost him even after his start faux pas.

PLUS: The Deja vu moment that reveals Bottas' true Hamilton deficit

Back to Red Bull - it surely has F1's second fastest car, as evidenced by Verstappen keeping Bottas at bay, while well clear of Lance Stroll's Racing Point, in Hungary. But it must close the gap fast or it could be that everything to be feared about the current chances of Mercedes domination rolls over, along with the current cars, into 2021.

No matter how that calendar shakes out - and predicting what it will look like is just pointless without progress on ending the pandemic - Mercedes will more than likely carry its form into another season. And if there is still no opposition, then it will be free to turn more of its attention to the rule changes now coming for 2022...