Hi all,

Recently I have been heavily into Gran Turismo Sport (i.e. pretty much play it daily at this point for an hour or so at a time). I really enjoy the game. However, as time has gone on and I have been placed with more experienced players (and to be blunt, faster people) my qualifying positions and race positions have dropped quite a bit. I am now looking at 1-2 seconds a lap slower than the fastest car, usually around 1 second a lap slower than the next best placed car during races, and essentially, I was wondering what can I look at to improve? I have done some of the license tests and seem to be doing ok on that front, but I am lacking on the competitive edge. I am hitting the apex's of the corners and doing what I feel the game is trying to teach there. However, I do get some tyre noise when going through the turns and also seem to be lacking pace coming out of the corners, especially tighter turns, or longer corners (such as the final turn in Tubaska, I think that is the name of the track, the recent course that has been added).

Any tips would be appreciated, I want to try and get better and I know practice will aid with this, but I am also feeling like I am hitting a stumbling block as during qualifying I am on my own so can not see how others are doing, and during the race, when I am not matched with equal level players, I am basically seeing the gap grow after a lap from the car ahead and struggle to keep up to see how they do it.

Thank you.

I am by no means an expert but here are some useful things:

During cornering you can slightly hold the acceleration trigger R2 instead of totally letting go or breaking, so once you slow down to the appriopriate speed for the corner you can keep that speed throghout the whole corner by slightly holding it and then almost immediately switch to fully holding R2 normally when your going out of the corner. It's actually a thing they teach in one of the lessons, specifically dedicated to it.

Another important thing is to use the curbstones (those strips on corners) when cornering. Just drive through them or on them. This is not cutting corners and it will give you more speed and faster laps. Of course it's not possible or recommended on every corner, but there are quite a few where this is useful. Like the car on the photo here, it will go through the curbstones with its right side instead of closely keeping to the "proper" road.

Some assists options might also slow you down. You can for example switch the levels of traction control (TCS) on the fly, use d-pad left or right to switch between several gauges displayed on the bottom right until you get to the TCS and adjust the levels using d-pad up and down. Assists definitely slow you down a little bit. Though It can be more difficult to drive without them. It will not make you a speed demon but can save a bit of miliseconds.

I would definitely recommend going through the whole driving school. It taught me a lot and made me a better driver. It covers a ton of stuff like the above in the later stages which are useful at higher level gameplay! Hope that helps!

A classic question and never easy to answer. Practice, practice, practice. Keep a mental note of a fast time you think you can do. Don't try and go for the fastest possible thing on a leaderboard because those are alien, freak of nature drivers. So pick a reasonable target on a specific track and go do lap after lap after lap. If you can see what a persons sector times are for that track, that'll give you a better reference to figure out where you are way off the pace or spots you might be doing better than you think.

Always try and be smooth of course. Relaxed.

It becomes a science at a certain point. Having a general understanding of physics and how a car is built can help get you into a certain mindset with a particular cars behavior. Understanding yourself, what sort of environment and mental state you thrive on or hinders your performance. Adjust your expectations for a race accordingly.

The list goes on and on. A lot of it depends on what kind of skill level you're at. You could also have just reached the tier of competition that is appropriate for you and there is nothing wrong with that. When I was playing this every day for awhile, racing with good people, watching other peoples races, talking about it on forums etc, a lot of people tend to focus on "winning" i.e. getting a podium finish or whatever. Realistically, GT Sport is more akin to real life where certain people who have a natural talent just tend to succeed, and instead the vast majority of other people should just enjoy a close, competitive race, even if your finishing position isn't near the top. If you typically finish 10th, then try to shoot for 9th or 8th. That is a win for you.

I've rambled enough for now.

@seikenfreak:

Is there any way of getting other peoples times to compare against in game? I did a time trial yesterday but it only shows my time on the leaderboard at the end of the laps I did.

Thank you both for the tips, I appreciate it. Some good ideas and good points raised.

@johnlocke: I just got an idea. You mentioned you've been playing online, so at the end of the race, there's an option to save a replay and then while watching you can switch the view from your car to other cars. It might be interesting to see what they did to achieve better laps then you. Keep in mind that certain cars might be slightly faster in the same class and some might suit you better than others, there are differences in how they drive. Try out different cars and see what suits you the most.

EDIT: Yeah, I just checked one of my online replays. You can switch the target car using L2 and d-pad up/down and then you can use r1 to switch views, there's even ones that are available during gameplay, so you can see exactly how the opponents drives as if you were playing. You can even see live lap times, graphs and other data. It might not be what you were asking about but that seems to be similar! :)

@johnlocke: When I played I would usually just check the qualifying/time trial leaderboard for that event and look at the bottom times. That was usually something I could achieve or get close to. The other way is if you have friends in the game, they will show up on the qualifying leaderboards or at the pre-race screen on the right.

Other than that, I guess you can just keep an eye on the current "Fastest Lap" time during a race itself.

@seikenfreak: @mattgiersoni:

Ok, thank you for the tips. Is there no way of loading ghost cars/able to compare split times between people in game? I am thinking of Formula 1 where you can watch other peoples laps during a practice/qualifying session and in Time Trial mode you can load a ghost car to see where they are faster and it will show split times in the garage when you go back to see the exact split times.

The replay thing I will need to give a look as that seems like it could be really useful. Thank you both for the help.

@johnlocke: Don't think so, but I'm not sure. I know that if you retry the race after finishing, without going to the main menu you get a ghost of your own from the previous race or your fastest lap, from what I remember. Internet tells me you can also do this, but again with only your own replays it seems:

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/you-can-now-save-fastest-lap-replays-and-reload-them-as-ghost-replays.368879/

My recommendation: Check out (non-GTS, such as iRacing or just regular racing) driving videos on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5eueqw24co&list=PLqZLBOpI5JFKebBA_i-SCkGRRypXovWv6

There are lots of "how to get faster" tutorials out there: make sure your corner entry/exit speeds are optimal, use ALL of the track available to you, you might be losing 0,15 secs per corner but in the end that all adds up 1,5-2 seconds.

Also using less breaks (like 10-15%) when entering a corner was a real time-saver for me, but this only happened after I properly configured by break sensitivity and only applies to having a racing pedals (and a wheel). Actually I find playing using a controller super-hard after getting used to the pedals.

@willyod: @mattgiersoni:

Thanks for the tips. All the help provided so far has helped me achieve some improvements in my lap times (around 1.5-2 seconds a lap on some tracks). The Highway route tracks though are a nightmare, I have got some improvement in lap times but it seems to have come at a cost in race in now I seem to drift into people by mistake when trying to keep the fast line going. I am also doing poorly in lap times still there (some improvement, say, 1.5 seconds, but I was doing mid 1.44's and now do 1.42s, yet the people I am looking at and trying to do similar to are doing 1.38's so there is still room to improve.

That said, thank you all for the help. If anybody else had suggestions and ways to improve I am keen to learn. Also if anybody just wants to discuss Gran Turismo Sport in general I am keen to talk about that too. Cheers all.

Are you using a controller or a racing wheel? I feel this makes a big difference when it comes to challenging the top guys. Of course there are some people out there who are brilliant and can match wheel times on a controller but for the average player it’s definitely going to be tough. That extra bit of time at the top comes from such small adjustments in brakes/throttle/steering that I feel are really difficult to achieve consistently with a controller.

I play with a wheel but it would be nice if you could see what control schemes those you are racing against use so you could get a better understanding of who it is you should look to compare yourself with

Pretty much this from my experience.

I started to get serious into play these racing sims around 2010 with the release of Gran Turismo 5 and getting my first racing wheel (a logitech DFGT). I'm not ashamed to say right at the start I wasn't very good, it took me a while just to get used to the wheel itself and being consistently quick lap after lap is something I'm always still trying to improve even today.

There isn't really any magic tip that'll boost you up the standings but if you put the time in you will eventually will see your driving improve.

I'm glad there are other people on giantbomb that enjoy this game. I was surprised at how much I liked it when I decided to purchase it. I try to play daily also and play 1 sport race. Doing the circuit experience for every track has been a good way to learn every track and find out how fast you can take corners. Getting the gold on some of them is difficult but rewarding.