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• Valtteri Bottas is second in the 2020 F1 championship.
• Bottas has spearheaded most of the opening practice sessions at this year’s races.
• Lewis Hamilton will win his seventh F1 championship in 2020, unopposed.
• For more motorsports stories, visit www.Wheels24.co.za
With just five races remaining in the 2020 Formula 1 season, it’s just a matter of ‘when’ Lewis Hamilton will win his seventh championship, which equals the record. The Briton has been in a class of his own all season and built up a 77-point lead over his Mercedes-AMG teammate Valtteri Bottas.
And given the pace Hamilton is at, it’s highly unlikely Bottas will be able to prevent him from signing another world championship in his name.
However, if we lived in a different world where points were shared in other circumstances, the 2020 championship standings would have looked very different than the one we are facing now.
READ: Bottas needs a ‘miracle’ to win 2020 F1 title
Do you think Bottas ever had a chance to win the F1 championship in 2020? Email us your thoughts.
Bottas could have won
The 2020 F1 season has been reversed, but the big shots managed to chain a season together. Sadly, Hamilton’s dominance is holding back any excitement one might have enjoyed at the front of the field. Still, we probably shouldn’t blame him and Mercedes for making the most of the regulations.
On a racing weekend, things start with the first two practice sessions on Friday, the third practice and qualifying on Saturday, and the race on Sunday. It is in the race where the points are assigned.
If points were split at the end of the first practice session in a different world, Bottas would lead this year’s championship race with 252 points to Hamilton’s 207. Bottas is the driver who has topped the most timesheets during the early practice sessions and has even been dubbed ‘The Friday Champion’ by F1 commentators.
READ: Inside a long shot: this is how Valtteri Bottas could win the 2020 F1 championship
Bottas, it seems, can extract performance from your car very quickly, while Hamilton will continually tap into your car’s potential and extract more performance as the race weekend progresses. This is quite revealing because while Bottas is fast from the start, he can’t keep it up for a weekend, something Hamilton can do with relative ease.
Unfortunately for Bottas, points are only distributed on Sundays. And if he ever wants to beat Hamilton for the title, he will have to find a way to turn his performances on Friday into race wins on Sundays.
