Evolution of our 6 + 3.6 M_⊙ system with hotspot formation. Top left: normalised hotspot L_hotspot (solid black line), accretion (dashed red) and Eddington (dotted green) luminosities. Top right: evolution of the masses with (solid black) and without (dashed blue) our hotspot formalism compared to van Rensbergen et al. (2008) hotspot formalism (dotted red). Bottom left: evolution of β for the gainer using our (solid black) and van Rensbergen et al. (2008) hotspot formalism (dotted red). Bottom right: evolution of the orbital separation (same colours as top right panel).