1 year
As there's been a little activity in this thread recently, and seeing as it's April and a whole year now since I gave up Sixaxis use and bought a G25 steering wheel, I figured it was a decent time for an update. Hopefully it'll be an interesting read for anyone still on the fence about whether or not to make the transition from pad to wheel in the run up to the eventual release of GT5.
Just yesterday I decided to go back to the GTP Spec III Qualifier (also IFTC Race 1) combo, Fuji Speedway F arcade time trial in the Mazda RX-7 on S2/S2 to see if I had improved any from the last time I ran it back in July 2009. At that stage I had a 1'54.941 which had me down to 96th or something on that supremely competitive board. After an hour of getting back into the combo I was ahead of it by a reasonable amount, but by the end of my sessions I had reached
1'54.323, which was approximately 0.620 faster than my previous best! And, pretty much 1 second a lap faster than my sixaxis best. Looking at the board, I can see a number of D1 Gold qualifier laps below my 25th place on the board, so a marked improvement even compared to 2 months ago, let alone a year ago or 9 months.
http://eu.gran-turismo.com/gb/products/gt5p/ranking/co9ca37s1m0.html
Nowadays, consistency is not a problem at all. 10 lap races can be done all within the same 2 or 3 tenth bracket. I see a lot of other guys with time trialling talent I still cannot match though, even GTP_CarlPKY who got a wheel at the same time as me and we progressed together, his TT ability is now as good as the best in the world, I feel at Suzuka and also in the Indy GT5 Demo TT I was about 0.2 to 0.3 seconds a lap behind now. But I feel my racing has remained at the same if not slightly better level than Carl's, so we developed a little differently over the last year.
One thing I am very happy with is that at Suzuka, with any given combo, I can now TT in the highest bracket whereas before I would always fall just short of breaking into the 1'51s at 800PP or the 2'14s at 550PP etc, a good example are these recent leaderboards:
Lotus 111R Tuned at 700PP Suzuka:
http://www.gtdb.net/?laps/1/700/34/*/3
Honda NSX-R at 550PP Suzuka:
http://www.gtdb.net/?laps/1/550/2/*/3
Ferrari F40 at 700PP Suzuka:
http://www.gtdb.net/?laps/1/700/36/*/3
and of course qualifying for the UK national finals of GT Academy, a feat that would have been flat impossible without a a good 9 months of wheel use behind me:
http://www.gtdb.net/?tt/61
I feel my own personal best talent at GT5P is now the ability to actually reproduce my best free run/TT laps in a race situation, something I feel not too many drivers can do, especially when my free run pace is only 0.1 or 0.2 off the best in the world (or at least GTDB
). I have regularly matched or run within about 0.05 of my best WRS or free run laptime while actually in a race without slipstream.
Looking at the RX7 Fuji lap yesterday, and the ability to stay within a tenth or three of geniuses like Ramon and now Carl at a place like Suzuka, I'm hoping D1 gold isn't too far off. But that's really not the important thing here, it's taking a step back and realising that the wheel purchase has taken in the region of 1 to 2 seconds per lap off my ultimate pace depending on the circuit, something I thought impossible when I came online at GTP. Everyone else has of course moved on too, even the people we considered aliens already 2 years ago, this is evidenced by the fact that newer and faster laps keep getting posted at GTDB when events cycle round again.
Just for anyone who's interested, I still use my plank/shoebox rig (
) and FFB 3 on GT5P, FFB 2 was what I found most fruitful on the GT5 TT Demo.
EDIT: Added links to all the separate entries on the first post 👍
All the best
Maz
👍
