Hello, I'm 59 y.o. living in Southern Illinois, USA, North America. I've been interested in cars most of my life. I started playing a some Need for Speed back 30 years ago. I'd spend a few hours here and there playing on a PC using a joystick. I wasn't a gamer growing up. I didn't buy a game console until a few years back. I don't do any other gaming besides Gran Turismo.
I've got a couple hands full of hours of actual track time under my belt at Porsche Club of America Driver's Education (DE) events in Porsche 968s and a 911 4S (993). Most of those hours are at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. That is an expensive hobby which wasn't viable for the long-term. So, I began to look at Driving Simulators like Gran Turismo to satisfy my need for speed. I eventually bought a PS4 and Gran Turismo Sport. Again, I put in a few hours here and there. I'd find that I'd go months without logging on. This was mostly a winter hobby as summer time is much better spent outdoors. So here I am in winter, engaging the new (to me) Gran Turismo 7. I got a Thrustmaster 150 wheel and pedal kit, but I haven't "set up" my cockpit just yet. I'm still using the PS4 controller.
I found gtplanet as I was looking for information about how to get past the Menu 37: Gr.B Rally Cars. I'm just not that interested in wasting the time required to engage the learning curve to gain the off-road and rally skills necessary to get past this menu. I don't plan to be doing any dirt track driving after I complete the menu. It's just not what I bought Gran Turismo to do. At present, I've got HOURS invested trying to get this menu completed. The highest I got to was 7th place. (after many, many hours of repeating the course). Luckily one of the Gr.B Rally cars came available in Legend Cars and I was able to buy one of them. But the other Gr.B Rally car isn't showing up in Legend Cars and it's now been a couple months since I've made any progress in the Menus. And recently I've learned -- thank you gtplanet! -- that once I get past the menus, I can begin to sell parts of my collection to raise money to buy cars that I actually want in my collection.
So, I've learned a bit about adjusting the suspension, the transmission, and the torque-vectoring differential to get the Gr.B Rally car to handle more predictable to be able to get up to 7th place. But for all of my adjusting, I still can't get near the 3rd place needed to get the menu complete. And for some reason, the folks that designed Gran Turismo don't seem to have designed the simulator to notice that the player is in Menu 37 and might need to buy the Gr.B Rally car to get past this particularly difficult menu. It could be months before they offer the Audi Gr. B rally car that I need to complete the menu. And I'm certainly not going to waste too much more time driving that ridiculous course to try to get 3rd place. So here I am; stuck!
Does anyone have any tips for getting the menu closed out? Is there a setting that I could use to get the Gr.B Rally car that I'm using to nail that track and get my times down to a level where I can actually get 3rd place?
I've got a few other thoughts on the game which don't make much sense. Why does the Used Car Lot offer so many cars that I have already acquired? At present, half the cars on the lot are vehicles that I already own. Can't the program easily have the system examine my Collection and offer cars that I don't yet have?
And why does the game have the AI drivers smash into me and others while on the course when they want the rest of us to consider Sportsmanship in our driving behavior? Isn't the best way to encourage sportsman-like behavior to have the AI drivers to behave according to the standards that the simulator designers ask us to meet? These AI drivers stop short, try to cut me off on long straights, bump me, try to squeeze in during corners when they don't have the line, etc. If I do any of that, I lose my Clean Race Bonus and lower my Sportsmanship score. The AI driver's behavior eventually wears you down and you start bumping back...
Other than that, I enjoy the game. I've still got a lot to learn. Just this week, I found the car that drives and handles just as I want it to: an '02 Mazda RX-7 Spirit 2 Type A -- 2240 lbs with 493 h.p. with a turbo add-on. Sadly, I can't seem to get any more power out of it. Not that it needs too much more horsepower but I can't get the PP past around 680 and the Turbo Races have cars with around 700 PP so I'm chasing hard to the last lap to get the win. I've been using a '17 GT-R with 699.80 PP which is a beast and allows me to get ahead by lap 4, but it doesn't have that "on rails" feeling that the RX-7 offers. I love me a super-light car with lots of power and superb handling. That's the real fun for me.
Well, that's me in a nutshell. I'm looking forward to learning more about the capabilities of this driving simulator.