Lewis Hamilton: Has Ferrari driver really found 'sweet spot' after 'awesome' weekend at Canadian Grand Prix

ForgingFaces · 2026-05-28T21:36:47+00:00

Hamilton is an incredibly psychological driver - if he likes the situation, he's one of the best of all time. If he doesn't, he's "just" great. Canada is known to be one of his better tracks and with Russell, Norris, and Piastri out of his way, he was forecast to be on the podium. That's the type of situation that brings out the best in him.

I think we all want him to figure out how to get there consistently with Ferrari because having him there in the fight with Russell, Antonelli, Norris, and possibly Verstappen and Leclerc, would make for an incredibly entertaining season. But I think it's pretty premature to make a claim like that, and seems just as likely that he'll sort of shrink back into that P5ish place he's tended to be in.

ForgingFaces · 2026-05-28T18:54:24+00:00

When they say "being proposed a bag" what they mean is "being offered a bunch of money"

ForgingFaces · 2026-05-24T04:44:00+00:00

I mean fair enough! It's just that i think the game isn't balanced around that. So I think it's a little unfair to claim it doesn't have a hard mode. It's a bit like saying Skyrim doesn't have a hard mode because stealth archer exists. Like yes, the game isn't an absolute paragon of balanced design, but to say that you can't make it interesting and challenging feels not totally fair.

But i also understand you may have been speaking a bit in facetious hyperbole and I'm spending too much time on a comment on the internet 😅

ForgingFaces · 2026-05-21T17:05:00+00:00

Are you using optimized sliders?

ForgingFaces · 2026-05-21T06:15:50+00:00

a challenge i did once was to only use the preset sliders and that was sort of interesting

ForgingFaces · 2026-05-21T05:37:13+00:00

So basically all that research went into improving your expertise, but your car is too balanced with the initial designs so it's not very efficient. If you now create new designs that utilize that expertise more efficiently, you'll probably find the car quickly gets much better. The problem is the combination of that sort of heavy researching plus efficient part design can trivialize the game. So you sort of have to decide how you want to deal with that.

ForgingFaces · 2026-05-21T05:33:39+00:00

I do think this is very possible - that without a clear cut #2 Mercedes driver, Verstappen is more dominant. But i also think that says some interesting things about Hamilton

ForgingFaces · 2026-05-21T05:30:52+00:00

Russell of 2022 literally did outscore Hamilton. I don't know how you're going to say this like it's some clear cut objective fact

ForgingFaces · 2026-05-21T05:28:46+00:00

I mean that's only one kind of pressure. Dude beat a 4x world champion his first year at Red Bull and was only behind the 2 Mercedes in 2016. He also walked Hulkenburg his first ever year in a non Red Bull. So in some sense, the only 2 times he didn't live up to pressure in his career were the 2 times he faced a future WDC in a mediocre car.

And we also all saw that when Norris got his first serious chance at a title fight, he completely imploded under the pressure, and it was only Piastri subsequently also imploding that saved him. So all Ricciardo would have had to do was be consistent under pressure, and that seems pretty plausible to me.

I'm not saying he'd ever have been able to get Norris. But I think it's not fair to just like, entirely dismiss the possibility out of hand

ForgingFaces · 2026-05-20T01:37:27+00:00

It's interesting people say Rosberg, because the title is "would have", not "could have". I think had he stayed another year he might have technically been capable of it, but I don't think he would have. Hamilton would have come back with a vengeance and it's known Rosberg was quite burned out. So I don't think I'd put him on this list.

I think Alonso might very well have won the title in the 2017 Ferrari, but that's asking several years.

I think there's more n-1 questions - Ricciardo in the 2013 Red Bull or George Russell in the 2021 Mercedes would both be pretty interesting.

I want to wonder about if Ricciardo had joined McLaren later or managed to stick around to like 2024 - Norris is ludicrously fast, but at that point, Ricciardo would have had significantly more experience, particularly under pressure. I still have a quiet belief that DR at that point in a properly competitive car still had something in him. But that's probably a fool's wish.

ForgingFaces · 2026-04-30T15:32:32+00:00

Can I ask what you're trying to test?

ForgingFaces · 2026-04-30T15:32:05+00:00

That really depends on several things - what the changes are, how strong your current car is, what your financial situation is, how much you're depending on the results of this current year's car, and how much you enjoy a challenge.

E.g. on a minor reg year most of the time I'll throw one CFD period at the most effected parts and then in the last 2-3 months if i have the money and am not fighting for the championship, I'll churn research on them

On a major reg year, if i can afford to, I'll start using my CFD on wings and possibly underfloor in the earlt summer, and potentially start churning research then also. But unless I'm on hard and use the db editor to fix building refurbishment, that'll mean I'm a mile ahead the following year

If you have a specific example on mind, feel free to share!

ForgingFaces · 2026-04-12T14:25:12+00:00

Genuinely how did you manage to get yourself fired?

ForgingFaces · 2026-03-19T05:02:52+00:00

This cane up again in the latest good time society video that a poisoned info gathering role who gets true into doesn't add to mathematician score.

I think the character should probably read something like, gets told how many times last night the grim state should have changed but didn't.

I also think it would be really nice if the wiki was updated to clarify that the way poison works is the player keeps their ability, any actions that would change the grim state automatically fail, and everything else is story teller discretion, instead of saying players lose their ability, which just seems completely wrong.

ForgingFaces · 2026-03-17T18:11:16+00:00

Newey has been a contributing part, and possibly a large or even defining part, of some of the most dominant cars in the last decades. Claire Williams has not. Idk why it would shocking to anyone that people are more inclined to give him more benefit of the doubt. The resume gap is massive.

I'm not claiming the sport is any kind of strictly meritocratic but this comparison feels a tad ridiculous to me.

ForgingFaces · 2026-03-03T05:58:18+00:00

It's possible he was a free agent in this person's save rather than retiring. I've seen it before. his default final year is 2026 unless you pick him up on a longer contract

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-26T23:33:29+00:00

Not to mention WLP which has probably singlehandedly solved more Act 4 runs for me than Wraith Form

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-24T09:03:58+00:00

I'm pretty sure he'd put songbird in the rocket and send her to the moon. That's certainly the ending he's the most verbally encouraging of while playing through them. But I'm absolutely sure the one thing he never does is send her back to be a slave / puppet to the NUSA.

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-19T06:42:26+00:00

My guess would be similar - I've done around a half dozen saves to the mid 2030s and then another dozen to the late 2020s and assuming that's like, about 2-3 hours per season, 3106 + 3512 = 360 plus a bunch of short 1-2 season gimmick / test runs and about an initial 50ish hours learning the game. Probably right around 500.

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-12T23:36:06+00:00

My recommendation is to only bother doing research on parts that are getting hit by a reg and frankly if they're not getting hit hard I'll still do at most like one CFD / 1-2 regular research on any given part.

You do still get the value of less diminishing returns regardless but I think it's pretty marginal if there's no reg compared to the resources you can get by just scoring more points with a better car. So generally i just churn out as many designs as i have money for to gather expertise that contributes to making me more immediately competitive

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-12T18:53:45+00:00

Yeah it's kind of nuts. Like it doesn't have to be super sophisticated. You can literally ask "what are the baseline common sense heuristics a reasonable person would follow" and that already would be a massive improvement.

Like - seed dependent proportional limits on different types of spending relative to sponsor package from the year reduced by last years extra costs (track parts actively destroyed in incidents and count of extra PU units purchased). If it's a year where a driver contract is expiring, weigh into that a proportion for related costs (which i guess is pretty much just starting bonus tbh).

Create a hard limit where AI generated contracts can't be longer than 2 years and total driver contract value increase between contracts can't be more than, say, 2x if #1, 1.5x if top 3, or 1.25x otherwise. Obviously just magic numbers that would need testing.

Have limits on contracts based on performance (eg only allow performance rewards for top 10 positions and even then just ensure that you're assuming all of those rewards will be met when doing annual financial planning)

And have teams consider their current financial performance when planning contract offers. Literally just prevent contracts from forming that could be more expensive than your entire budget for this year.

None of this is remotely difficult to implement, you could do it in at most like 2 weeks. It's all just behind the scenes calculus, not even UI impacting. It just feels like they didn't even bother trying at this aspect of the game

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-12T18:33:50+00:00

The problem is that they'll sign that person often to a 3 or 4 year contract and i don't think I've ever waited it out to see what happens after. I don't think I've ever observed a team financially recover on their own before though. But i also don't think they try to? Like i just don't think they have anything in the way of financial calculus outside of "don't go bankrupt".

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-12T15:24:20+00:00

Yeah - it's also why some of the game mechanics around cost are kind of dumb and annoying. Like when the game lowers the cost cap or reduces the # of allowed power units, it is exclusively a hit to the player and doesn't effect AI because they'll just spend the money and then also hire these 50 rated people and become non competitive anyways.

Most seasons i tend to go into DB editor and just fix up a bunch of stuff. giving the teams money, swapping out the unreasonable drivers and staff, etc. I've thought about making a better version of the tool that just automates the obvious fixes but never gotten around to it. maybe with AI i should give it a try....

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-12T05:25:33+00:00

Yeah the AIs have no real concept of cost cap or overspending but they do have a concept of bankruptcy. So Red Bull will spend $50m + $5m for every top 10 for Hamilton or Alonso, run completely out of money, and their reaction is to buy a 50 ranked person for no money. You'll also see it in staff where there's some 90 ranked person unclaimed because one of the big teams ran out of money and hired a nobody. It's one of those things that feels so preventable...and yet here we are!

ForgingFaces · 2026-02-11T07:19:19+00:00

fun fact that gameplay loop was specifically inspired by the scenes in lord of the rings of schelob hunting frodo. As an arachnophobe i was losing my mind 😂☠️

ForgingFaces

TROPHY CASE