This weekend of Gran Turismo esports, with the first live event since more than 2 years being hosted in Salzburg, has seen the consecration of a new frontman figure of simracing on Playstation.
Frenchman Kylian Drumont took the win in both Nations Cup and Manufacturers Cup in an unepected display of calm and focus for his first ever appearance on the stage. He was helped by a strong Daniel Solis into bringing Subaru as the winning manufacturer on Saturday's final, despite their teammate Takuma Miyazono being absent due to covid.
It is to be noted that Daniel Solis runs on pad at home, and qualified with it through the online series, and although everyone is required to use the provided wheels on stage, he delivered an important message to the community after his performance:
Speaking of wheels, the event used Thrustmaster TGT-II despite the game now being officially partnered with Fanatec. No statement was made from Polyphony Digital in this regard, but it is to be noted that the Porsche team had to retire during the Manufacturers final because of a wheel issue, breaking Martin Grady's record for the longest pit stop in the process.
This wasn't the only technical problem encountered on Saturday, as cars started lagging heavily on broadcast in the early laps of the final, before the race got redflagged after 2 teams were disconnected, prompting a 45 minutes break before the race could be restarted.
According to one of the competitors, the router was overloaded, so the staff decided to split the network over 2 routers during that time. This seems to have been an effective strategy, as no further issue has occured for the rest of the weekend.
The longer races format did some good to the show, as both finals saw plenty of action and interesting strategies all around, making things much more enjoyable than the previous years for both spectators and drivers. The highlights format for the qualifying races during Sunday's broadcast of Nations Cup was a bit more questionnable, as commentators were anticipating what was going to be showed, and lots of action outside of podium positions was missed, despite the highlights being post produced videos. Initial feedback from the community so far tells that people would rather have the races uploaded separately and posted before the final race in full.
You will find the race results for both series finals below, with the amount of points scored from the event. These points will count towards the global series ranking, which will decide of this year's overall titles.
Some of the competitors were also pulled into a couple races against Sophy, Sony's superhuman self learning AI. Although those were brushed over pretty quickly during the broadcast, it is interesting to see that Sophy won the first race but lost out the second one to Valerio Gallo. Sophy's pace was turned down a notch on the second race though, with competitors reporting it was running 1.5s a lap off its maximum pace. One of the AI ran car was shown spinning out of control after being pushed by a player, and Emily Jones said on stream she felt it was very human-like in its behavior, retaliating on her after she pushed one of the agents car off track.
Interestingly, the Gran Turismo TV youtube account replied in chat to an italian viewer that Sophy's addition to the public release of GT7 was planned to happen by the end of the year.
Next official broadcast will be an online event on September 25th, with the World Final and the Toyota Gazoo Racing GT Cup being hosted in Monaco at the end of November. Are you looking forward to the next shows ?
Frenchman Kylian Drumont took the win in both Nations Cup and Manufacturers Cup in an unepected display of calm and focus for his first ever appearance on the stage. He was helped by a strong Daniel Solis into bringing Subaru as the winning manufacturer on Saturday's final, despite their teammate Takuma Miyazono being absent due to covid.
It is to be noted that Daniel Solis runs on pad at home, and qualified with it through the online series, and although everyone is required to use the provided wheels on stage, he delivered an important message to the community after his performance:
Speaking of wheels, the event used Thrustmaster TGT-II despite the game now being officially partnered with Fanatec. No statement was made from Polyphony Digital in this regard, but it is to be noted that the Porsche team had to retire during the Manufacturers final because of a wheel issue, breaking Martin Grady's record for the longest pit stop in the process.
This wasn't the only technical problem encountered on Saturday, as cars started lagging heavily on broadcast in the early laps of the final, before the race got redflagged after 2 teams were disconnected, prompting a 45 minutes break before the race could be restarted.
According to one of the competitors, the router was overloaded, so the staff decided to split the network over 2 routers during that time. This seems to have been an effective strategy, as no further issue has occured for the rest of the weekend.
The longer races format did some good to the show, as both finals saw plenty of action and interesting strategies all around, making things much more enjoyable than the previous years for both spectators and drivers. The highlights format for the qualifying races during Sunday's broadcast of Nations Cup was a bit more questionnable, as commentators were anticipating what was going to be showed, and lots of action outside of podium positions was missed, despite the highlights being post produced videos. Initial feedback from the community so far tells that people would rather have the races uploaded separately and posted before the final race in full.
You will find the race results for both series finals below, with the amount of points scored from the event. These points will count towards the global series ranking, which will decide of this year's overall titles.
Some of the competitors were also pulled into a couple races against Sophy, Sony's superhuman self learning AI. Although those were brushed over pretty quickly during the broadcast, it is interesting to see that Sophy won the first race but lost out the second one to Valerio Gallo. Sophy's pace was turned down a notch on the second race though, with competitors reporting it was running 1.5s a lap off its maximum pace. One of the AI ran car was shown spinning out of control after being pushed by a player, and Emily Jones said on stream she felt it was very human-like in its behavior, retaliating on her after she pushed one of the agents car off track.
Interestingly, the Gran Turismo TV youtube account replied in chat to an italian viewer that Sophy's addition to the public release of GT7 was planned to happen by the end of the year.
Next official broadcast will be an online event on September 25th, with the World Final and the Toyota Gazoo Racing GT Cup being hosted in Monaco at the end of November. Are you looking forward to the next shows ?
