Lewis Hamilton intends to close out his attempt to win a fifth Formula One world championship without relinquishing the lead he has over Sebastian Vettel.

As the season resumes after its summer break, Hamilton leads his title rival by 24 points after 12 races, the largest advantage either has enjoyed all season. The Mercedes driver established the gap after winning the last two rounds, in Germany and Hungary, against the head.

Ferrari’s Vettel opened the season with a win in Australia and with the teams very evenly matched in machinery no driver had been able to establish a definitive advantage until Hamilton’s most recent two victories. The British driver has five wins to Vettel’s four but both have enjoyed time at the top of the table. The lead had changed hands six times between the pair.

Before this weekend in Spa, Hamilton was taking nothing for granted despite his advantage but wants to ensure he does not let Vettel back into the fight. “I don’t think I have a one‑race advantage in the sense that I can relax,” he said. “I still have exactly the same approach as the previous races, so that means extending the lead is the way to go, I don’t want to lose the points that I have.

“We have had times this year when it has gone back and forth but I do not want the pendulum to go back the other way again. So how I stop that is the question in the back of my mind.”

The four-times world champion admitted that while his focus was on ensuring he maintained the pressure on Vettel, he was enjoying the solid lead over the German. “I guess it is a little bit different when you are eight points behind, because you don’t want to lose any more ground. So I am sure when you do have a little bit of a buffer, subconsciously there is a positive effect.”

Hamilton’s record in the second half of the season has been remarkably strong since the turbo-hybrid era began in 2014. That year he won five races between Monza and Austin on the way to the title. In 2015 and 2017, he took five wins from six races after Hungary, and the title on both occasions. He said in Spa that he expected Mercedes to employ an engine upgrade this weekend on a circuit that is largely power-dependent and that he was optimistic they would build on the momentum established before the summer break.

“The second half is exciting,” he said. “We have had so many ups and downs at the beginning of the year but what normally happens is you go from strength to strength through the year, through the good and the bad. We have got lots of positives to take in to this second half of the season and there is more juice to come.”

The FIA has approved an F1 entry for Force India under a new name after the team was taken over from administration by a consortium led by the Williams driver Lance Stroll’s father, Lawrence. Since the takeover, the team which is now called Racing Point Force India, has been working with the FIA to ensure they could continue competing. They will compete at Spa but since the original Force India entry has been annulled the FIA has ruled that they will be excluded from the world championship and forfeit their constructors’ championship points. The drivers, however, will keep their championship points.