About a month after the first of this year's Gran Turismo World Series esports championship online season ended, Sony and Polyphony Digital are about to broadcast Round 1 of the World Series global online races this weekend.
The Manufacturers Cup will air at 14:00 BST on Saturday 23rd while Nations Cup will be on Sunday 24th at the same hour. The show has been pre-recorded, as the races have already been done. This is the standard procedure adopted for all these online events, and one Polyphony Digital usually tries to force onto 3rd party events they're aware of.
The drivers qualified to compete for global championship points were selected through a quite convoluted process: some were automatically picked thanks to their results during last year's official events on GT Sport, while the rest have been picked according to their results in the first 2022 online season. The list of attending drivers has been posted here.
This list features a lot of returning competitors, as well as a few new names for the official GT series. Obvious favorites will be Igor Fraga, Takuma Miyazono and Valerio Gallo, all recent champions and with the former also being a real life single seater racer. Other serious contenders are ready to take all the glory though, such as Gran Turismo veterans like Baptiste Beauvois, Patrik Blazsán and Ádám Tápai, all known for competing in the best series like GT Fusion since the PS3 era, and for being part of the infamous Team Redline at some point. Interesting to note is that Igor Fraga isn't the only one with real life racing experience: Jorge "Coque" López raced bikes in spanish championships.
Some seemingly new names also need to be watched closely though. Jose Serrano especially could be playing for the win: he won in 2021 the flagship series of IGTL - a series in which more than half the roster of this weekend's races have competed in, including Gallo who won the 2020 edition of the GT3 Masters championship. Miroslaw Kravchenko is also a notable IGTL competitor, known for his very aggressive attitude and eagerness, often resulting in spectacular overtakes.
But things aren't necessarily only a matter of performance: the division of servers between major regions (5 for Nations, 3 for Manufacturers) with a set number of slots allocated for each of those, with uneven distribution and player density, limits per country on top of that makes the selection process quite complex, and seen as unfair by some competitors, as some of the fastest racers are sometimes left out for picking the wrong manufacturer, having too much competition from their own country, or being outscored by someone in the same manufacturer from a different region, considered less competitive. Minimum age can also prevent some competitors to take part. For instance, the BMW spot for Manufacturers went to the 2nd person in line: Will Murdoch, another IGTL racer who finished 3rd in 2021's GT3 overall standings, took the burden to qualify BMW in his own hands, but got declined the possibility to race since he hasn't celebrated his 18th birthday yet.
A lot of previous high level competitors and champions are missing from the list, some for reasons mentioned above, but most have just moved away from Gran Turismo for deeper reasons, as recently exposed by a series of interviews by Jalopnik.
The lack of prizepools and recognition feature among the main issues cited by veteran players, but a perhaps even more critical concern is the engineered absence of esports teams and sponsors: as players are forced to wear official GT merch at all times, wether in live events or recorded on camera during online races, they can't provide any visibility to their teams and sponsors.
This situation doesn't encourage esports actors to invest, as there is absolutely no return on investment down the line, which in turns hurts both player's perspectives of turning their skill and time investment into a career, and Polyphony's possibilities of growing the scene and making a profit from these events, while they refuse at the same time to support 3rd party events.
The current state of GT7, with its unfinished online lobbies, is also deterring people from taking part. Defending champion Valerio Gallo initially stated on tweeter he would stop racing until GT7 became "a proper game to play and esports ready", before retracting following direct pressure from Polyphony Digital who said this would disqualify him from attending the upcoming Salzburg live event, to which Gallo is normally automatically qualified thanks to his standing champion status:
Despite those shortcomings, the fact remains that all the competitors featured are incredibly talented simracers, and if the event conditions are set right, this could produce very intense racing. If you own Gran Turismo 7, you can also boot the game up and pick who you think wins the Manufacturers and the Nations race, with in-game credits rewards if you bet on the right horse. But did Polyphony Digital bet on the right one with this year's formats ?
Tell us what you want from simracing esports in the comments, either as competitors or spectators.
The Manufacturers Cup will air at 14:00 BST on Saturday 23rd while Nations Cup will be on Sunday 24th at the same hour. The show has been pre-recorded, as the races have already been done. This is the standard procedure adopted for all these online events, and one Polyphony Digital usually tries to force onto 3rd party events they're aware of.
The drivers qualified to compete for global championship points were selected through a quite convoluted process: some were automatically picked thanks to their results during last year's official events on GT Sport, while the rest have been picked according to their results in the first 2022 online season. The list of attending drivers has been posted here.
This list features a lot of returning competitors, as well as a few new names for the official GT series. Obvious favorites will be Igor Fraga, Takuma Miyazono and Valerio Gallo, all recent champions and with the former also being a real life single seater racer. Other serious contenders are ready to take all the glory though, such as Gran Turismo veterans like Baptiste Beauvois, Patrik Blazsán and Ádám Tápai, all known for competing in the best series like GT Fusion since the PS3 era, and for being part of the infamous Team Redline at some point. Interesting to note is that Igor Fraga isn't the only one with real life racing experience: Jorge "Coque" López raced bikes in spanish championships.
Some seemingly new names also need to be watched closely though. Jose Serrano especially could be playing for the win: he won in 2021 the flagship series of IGTL - a series in which more than half the roster of this weekend's races have competed in, including Gallo who won the 2020 edition of the GT3 Masters championship. Miroslaw Kravchenko is also a notable IGTL competitor, known for his very aggressive attitude and eagerness, often resulting in spectacular overtakes.
But things aren't necessarily only a matter of performance: the division of servers between major regions (5 for Nations, 3 for Manufacturers) with a set number of slots allocated for each of those, with uneven distribution and player density, limits per country on top of that makes the selection process quite complex, and seen as unfair by some competitors, as some of the fastest racers are sometimes left out for picking the wrong manufacturer, having too much competition from their own country, or being outscored by someone in the same manufacturer from a different region, considered less competitive. Minimum age can also prevent some competitors to take part. For instance, the BMW spot for Manufacturers went to the 2nd person in line: Will Murdoch, another IGTL racer who finished 3rd in 2021's GT3 overall standings, took the burden to qualify BMW in his own hands, but got declined the possibility to race since he hasn't celebrated his 18th birthday yet.
A lot of previous high level competitors and champions are missing from the list, some for reasons mentioned above, but most have just moved away from Gran Turismo for deeper reasons, as recently exposed by a series of interviews by Jalopnik.
The lack of prizepools and recognition feature among the main issues cited by veteran players, but a perhaps even more critical concern is the engineered absence of esports teams and sponsors: as players are forced to wear official GT merch at all times, wether in live events or recorded on camera during online races, they can't provide any visibility to their teams and sponsors.
This situation doesn't encourage esports actors to invest, as there is absolutely no return on investment down the line, which in turns hurts both player's perspectives of turning their skill and time investment into a career, and Polyphony's possibilities of growing the scene and making a profit from these events, while they refuse at the same time to support 3rd party events.
The current state of GT7, with its unfinished online lobbies, is also deterring people from taking part. Defending champion Valerio Gallo initially stated on tweeter he would stop racing until GT7 became "a proper game to play and esports ready", before retracting following direct pressure from Polyphony Digital who said this would disqualify him from attending the upcoming Salzburg live event, to which Gallo is normally automatically qualified thanks to his standing champion status:
Despite those shortcomings, the fact remains that all the competitors featured are incredibly talented simracers, and if the event conditions are set right, this could produce very intense racing. If you own Gran Turismo 7, you can also boot the game up and pick who you think wins the Manufacturers and the Nations race, with in-game credits rewards if you bet on the right horse. But did Polyphony Digital bet on the right one with this year's formats ?
Tell us what you want from simracing esports in the comments, either as competitors or spectators.
