Well then, that was different. From having epic battles to meeting amazing players to watching some great Motorsport to chatting with Jimmy Broadbent to getting ridiculously well treated to racing a hilariously underpowered Renault to having a game design discussion with Kaz to getting
killed by
@mthomas_95 in an extremely crucial qualifying session to then getting revenge by punting him to Narnia in a truck sim... thing. Its been a pretty wild week. Lets go through it shall we?
WEDNESDAY
I woke up at 4am after 1 hour sleep... mthomas buys some toast... and
@Tidgney arrives and we make VTEC jokes about the planes engines spinning up... That concludes anything remotely interesting that happened in the UK.
Land at Frankfurt airport,
@force ewerby materialises out of nowhere and we wait 6000 years for my luggage... That concludes the report on Frankfurt airport.
So we get on our coach to the Nurburgring, which literally had a Gran Turismo racing window banner on the front (Good job whoever thought of that) and start meeting some of the other non-british drivers. Us Brits immediately commandeer the 5 back seats in the Coach which I'm sure was nice and stereotypical for everyone
We arrive at the Nurburgring, and get given all the Puma stuff for the stream, as well as a few other bits, the surprise came when we got to keep it all... Awesome. Kaz shook everyone's hand thanking them for coming. We then did an absolute ton of media stuff (photos, interviews, etc.), and got the driver briefing.
This Driver Briefing was
lengthy, with the Polyphony team introducing lots of new rules for the weekend, I'm sure you've all seen them in action by now, but the Pit Stop penalties and ability to finish your current lap in Qually after the timer expires are cool. Kaz then joins the driver briefing to explain the tyre model changes and tells everyone to enjoy themselves.
Then we get to practice the Red Bull x2014 Junior Nations Semi-Final race for 30 minutes each... More on the Semi-Final later... End up sharing a lodge with mthomas and Tidgney for the next few days. That about does it for today.
THURSDAY
Day 2 starts with practising the Manufacturers Final Monza race for 30 minutes each... We then had a bunch of free time until the Nations Semi-Final later in the day.
The Nations Semi-Finals
were a disaster for me... there's no other way to put it.
I pit early in qualifying as there was lots of traffic - end of lap 2 - complete my out-lap and attempt my first flyer where I completely bottle the second sector, so back off to save the tyres... Start my second flyer, and hit a purple sector 1 by 2 tenths, then, on the outside of Turn 6, I see mthomas's car reverse onto the racing line. This was the part where I found out there wasn't any ghosting this weekend as I was
unceremoniously killed on my final qualifying lap. Race control didn't seem to care. Start P9... Uh oh.
Climb to P5 in the race, get in range to have a go at P4, but then get punted into Turn 3, Essentially putting any hope to bed of making the final. Race control didn't seem to care. Ah well. Finish P6.
Now you've got 2 choices at this point, get salty, or realise you are having the best week of your life at the Nurburgring, and drop the thing. I chose the latter. Everyone else's Semi-Final heats were amazing to watch. Unfortunate things happen in racing, if you can't accept that, you are probably in the wrong hobby.
We move on.
This was the also the first day we got to go in the VIP Lounge in the hotel across the road from the Nurburgring. Free Food, Free Drink. I've said it before, I'll say it again, we were treated far too well for this event.
We end the day picking manufacturers for tomorrows race. They did it by Nations Semi-Final qualifying time, which put me 29th of 30 since I never actually set a proper time, putting me at the very bottom of the barrel for manufacturer picks. Get Renault. Oh god.
FRIDAY
We start the day with each
team getting 1 hours practice on Nurburging 24 in our Manufacturers. Here's where we learn that on the new tyre model and BoP, Its about 6 seconds off the leaders pace, 3 seconds of that getting lost on the big straight alone... We also need to take an additional pit stop in the race as the tyres on MR Gr3 cars on the new tyre model shred EVEN MORE. We have work to do.
Manufacturers Final - as you guys know - started early in the afternoon, so we didn't do much else between practice and the race.
Monza qually, my teammate who drove wasn't able to get in a clean lap unfortunately, Start the race last.
I run first stint, as I told the team that I race pretty well in traffic, didn't disappoint as I brought the car to the pits at the end of Lap 5 in P4 with nothing but a small shortcut penalty as I had to dodge a Porsche spinning to its death. Teammates continue this fantastic run, ending the race in P2 with a car with absolutely ZERO straight line performance. We are absolutely buzzing at this point!
The Nurburgring 1 hour race I ran the first stint again, Managing to keep it in P3 after getting absolutely freight train'd by the BMW on the big straight from 2 seconds back, 1st teammate hops in and does a blistering stint, but catches a really unfortunate spin which costs us about 16 seconds as we had to wait to rejoin the circuit. Passing to the final teammate, he does everything he can from P7, but we just miss out on the podium by 3 seconds and get P4. God damn deathtrap Renault why u do dis.
We were still happy to get the 9th picked car to P4 though, and both races were amazing fun. A P3 Trophy would've been nice though.
Another Silver lining is Team Renault wasn't involved in a single Investigation. Take that Team Ferrari
All the Brits came back to our lodge on the night and watched Chris and Jimmy's amazing commentary of the Manufacturer Final.
SATURDAY
Nothing much GT related for me on Saturday as I was already eliminated from Nations, so just chilled out during the day and enjoyed some of the real Nurburgring 24h race.
Did the Grid Walk, Checked the paddock out, watched the race start from the Turn 1 Grandstand. It was awesome.
Watched the Nations Final from the second row, was absolutely awesome to watch live, some issues with race control again as you probably all know, but all in all it was absolutely brilliant.
After the Nations Final the PD team brought out like 3 crates of beer and we hung around until 3 in the morning. I was able to chat to Kaz for about 20 minutes regarding secret stuff. (Alright, Alright, I'll show my hand
a bit at the end of the report
)
SUNDAY
Did literally nothing, Watched F1, enjoyed the last day of the experience, exchanged some fun stories with the other guys there, punted the other Brits in a children's truck simulator.
MONDAY
Regained Pleb status.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
RANDOM ASSORTED THOUGHTS
- The Nations Semi-Final structure was far too brutal, 1 bad result and you are out of the main day and get a bad car for manufacturers, seemed really harsh.
- The Tyre Model is more predictable on corner entry, and much trickier on corner exit. Any aggressive Wheel or Pedal movements are now much more likely to step the car out. That's really the best way I can sum it up.
- CSA and TCS were banned, If you ever plan on getting serious with this game, I recommend you stop using them entirely, otherwise if you ever end up at a live event you will probably die lots of times.
- The treatment we got was mental, I can't stress that enough, they really, REALLY look after you.
- For those saying they should've made invitations more clear, the way it was sort of explained at the event was they want the best active players there, as in, the guys that play regardless for fun, not the guys that only show up playing the game when they smell a free trip to Germany. "The Gran Turismo Family" was the way Kaz put it. I'm 90% sure that was the reason for the sudden unannounced invitations. At least that's kind of what was insinuated... Don't shoot the messenger.
- Players were invited based on DR value as of April 12th.
- There will be another world tour.
- DR: S is returning... with a twist.
- Those who complain about the current ABS might want to get excited.
- If you want to go to a future World Tour, getting loads of DR and FIA championship points is probably a good idea.
- Kaz wants cars to spin in car collisions more easily.
- PD have hired the Top 3 Japanese players to work on BoP.
- Group 3 MR balance is a known issue and is being looked at.
- The new tyre model won't be put in as is.
- They have "homework to do" on the penalty system and how it scales with player skill level.
A lot more went on, I've probably missed some interesting stuff, but I'm not listing everything, anything I missed which I think is important I'll put below somewhere.
#JusticeForBiermann
