Gran Turismo Sport

[Rare White Ape]

With shooters like Halo and SWBF if there’s someone who’s got 22 kills and 3 deaths, compared to my 3 kills and 22 deaths, I know that there’s no hope of me gitting as gud as that.

However with racing games, I do have some idea about how one can go faster, so in my mind it’s an attainable goal that I can work at if I’m prepared to put the time and effort into it.

[pl8ster]

With shooters like Halo and SWBF if there’s someone who’s got 22 kills and 3 deaths, compared to my 3 kills and 22 deaths, I know that there’s no hope of me gitting as gud as that.

However with racing games, I do have some idea about how one can go faster, so in my mind it’s an attainable goal that I can work at if I’m prepared to put the time and effort into it.

That's why I kept racing the Gr. 4 race at the Kyoto combo track yesterday. Three or four times, I qualified 10th or worse and finished in the bottom 3 spots. Finally relented and used the Megane Trophy, cut a second off my best lap time, qualified 2nd and ended up winning that race. After that, back to finishing in the bottom 5 for the next 2-3 races. I'm just not very good at racing against others, generally. I get so used to my own braking points and racing lines, I'm just not very good at adjusting to seemingly random variances of other drivers. And some of the penalties are still crazy. In one of the races, someone two cars ahead of me took a poor line going into the next-to-last S-curve, which forced the driver ahead of me to slow suddenly, I couldn't stop in time and I bumped them. Not even enough to throw them off their line, they still made the corner. Bam, 10-second penalty.

[dodint]

Decided at the last minute yesterday to run the Manufacturers race, Gr.4 at Nurburgring GP. Qualified 3rd after no warm up and two laps of qualifying. Had a good race, fell back to 6th early by making some small mistakes so I just let people past while I got my act together. Clawed back up to 4th and pitted in, passed a guy in the pits and came out 3rd. Made up seven seconds on the leaders as they were engaged in a battle. Leader had a penalty showing so on the last lap the guy in 2nd gave up and just hung out behind him. I took advantage and got around (I think I surprised them a bit), then got within a second of the leader at start/finish and won due to their penalty. So I got a victory with a penalty-free race with no practice, go figure. It was a D/S room though so I only earned 109pts. Was still fun though.

[pl8ster]

That is pretty sweet! But the points thing sucks. Do you do both Nations and Manufacturer's races? I've only been doing the Nations races thus far, with not too much success, and am wondering if you have experience with both and can offer any insight into maybe having better results on the Manufacturer's side (I just can't commit to running both). Contrary to your race prep, I was planning on running last night's Nations race at Dragon Trail Gardens, a track I don't typically do too well at. I tested out a few different cars at lunch yesterday and for at least a brief period, had a faster practice lap time than The359, though as expected that didn't last long. Did a bunch of practice laps before the race entry, but couldn't quite match my earlier practice time during the actual qualifying and qualified 5th. Didn't have as good a race as I would have liked and finished 7th, but that got me a bit over 400 points.

[dodint]

The359 does both, I only do the Manufacturers series. I suspect that I only won because my last two outings in the series tanked my rating from B to D and now I'm effectively sandbagging until my rating increases.

Somewhat unrelated, but I have been doing the offline Formula 1500 series lately and it makes the Cayman feel like it has all the get up and go of a shopping cart. I think switching from a Gr.X car to a Gr.4 car on the same track helped me a little.

[pl8ster]

I bet you're right about going from high power to lower power, I know my driving 'skill' definitely is better-suited to lower-powered cars in general anyway. I can't drive those Formula 1500 cars to save my life, my best finish in the first Brands Hatch race is 8th. I think I had traction control turned up to 4. I just can't master the throttle modulation of "no power, no power, ALL THE POWER!" I'd like to blame my controller use, but I'm sure plenty of people have success with a controller.

[dodint]

I use TCS 2 for all tintops but I think I have TCS bumped up to 3 for the 1500.

[The359]

I've noticed that the Nations Cup races seem to hand out more points than the Manufacturers Series races. I think that has more to do with the fact that the rooms in the Nation Cup are based solely on practice time+ranking, while the Manufacturer rooms seem to be based on practice time+ranking+manufacturer variety, in other words they try to divide the manufacturers up so you end up with some variety in the quality of the rooms. For instance, the Nations Cup race at Dragon Tail Gardens was mostly Porsches, Mercedes, and Mitsubishis, while the Manufacturers Series race at the Nurburgring didn't have more than 3 cars from any one manufacturer. I was, as I usually tend to be, the only Aston Martin in the room. Because a lot of the Nations Cup races feature the same cars, it is more difficult to pass someone on an equal footing, while the Manufacturers Series has cars with various pros and cons, meaning you can use that to your advantage to get ahead of someone in front of you. But in the end, some cars are just going to be better. My Nurburgring race was dominated by a Cayman, and I had a second Cayman that I had to strongly defend against as well.

You're almost never going to match your fastest practice lap in qualifying, if only because tire wear is on in qualifying and you have to do the whole out lap, so you're taking a grip penalty by default. A lot of my qualifying efforts have been disappointing if only because of the limited amount of actual track time in 10 minutes.

[dodint]

Cayman did feel good at N-GP. I noticed that the GT-Rs had to full on brake in T5 when all I had to do was lift a little early and I would sail through the turn. That's how I took 2nd place, well executed T5 and subsequent good in and out for T7.

[The359]

Totally didn't see you in the room until I was literally right beside you on the track, pl8 I was busy looking at my phone in the warm-up.