[Bug]: Championship prediction sensors ignore updates while the predicted P1 does not change #828

Prerequisites

• I am running the latest version of F1 Sensor
• I have searched existing issues
• I have restarted Home Assistant
• All information in this issue, including logs and screenshots, is written in English. Issues containing non-English content will be closed without response.

F1 Sensor Version

5.7.2 (the same code is still in the v5.8.0 tag)

Component

Integration

Device

Raspberry Pi 5

Home Assistant Installation Type

Home Assistant Container

System Architecture

aarch64

Screenshot or Screen Recording

No response

Current Behavior

During the 2026 Singapore GP race, sensor.f1_live_championship_championship_prediction_drivers and sensor.f1_live_championship_championship_prediction_teams kept the values they had at 11:07:54Z (when the live window opened) for the whole race, while the live stream was clearly updating.

Integration diagnostics during the race:

live_timing.streams.ChampionshipPrediction: {"frame_count": 90, "last_seen_age_s": 15.8, "last_payload_keys": ["Drivers"]}

The predicted P1 never changed during the race (ANT for drivers, Mercedes for teams), and that seems to be the cause. In F1ChampionshipPredictionDriversSensor._apply_payload:

if (not force) and self._attr_native_value == tla:
    return

and the same pattern in F1ChampionshipPredictionTeamsSensor._apply_payload (== team_name). Every payload is discarded while the predicted leader stays the same, including the drivers / teams attributes, which hold everyone else's predicted position and points and change lap by lap. Cards that read those attributes stay frozen.

Expected Behavior

The attributes (predicted positions and points of all drivers/teams) should update with every payload, even when the predicted P1 does not change, for example by comparing the whole payload instead of only the state before returning early.

Logs

No error is logged; the stream is received (diagnostics above), only the sensor write is skipped.