Time Trial Discussion

[KK78]

Using a ghost is a must for me in most cases although I have it set in real-time, it's quite amazing how I will be quicker following a ghost even if it's a car/track combo I am very familiar with. I just do wish you could alter the opacity of ghosts because on some combos they can be distracting if you're keeping up with them (but then a quick tap of the home button removes them of course)

Back to the White Spider in the Mitsu and I'm about at my limit now I think, I swapped Tidgney's ghost for Metalgear's to try and finesse the snaking curves more, it helped as I chopped a total of 3 tenths off but it also highlighted how, on the controller, the turning circle of this car is quite a hindrance in the turns particularly in turns 4, 5 and 7. The damn thing just won't turn as much on controller even when you downshift to 1st to encourage rotation, it also appears impossible to brake as late and still turn in the long right uphill curve on controller.

But overall happy to be over a second quicker than the Gold time.

Even if I'm a mere 100th behind my good friend @Ian JB

Also, as an aside, Norwand is a really annoying example of my pet peeve In GT, namely voiding the lap after one where you have messed up and gone 'red'. I understand it on the final corner to stop drivers from gaining an advantage on the next lap but touching the bridge way before the final right-hander or brushing the grass on the climb up the hill has zero effect on the next lap so why does it invalidate it? I either then have to do a red lap so that I can maintain my sector times or start again. It's lazy in my opinion on the devs part and is a common issue on many TTs.

Anyhow, that's my Monday grumble, have a good weeks guys

 

[P-Courty]

Not really been very active on here due to busy times with working away and the wifes business when I'm back home, so just haven't had the feeling to get back into being competitive.

Instead I've been having some fun learning to drift again on Assetto on the PC with the new wheel for some downtime, it's very different to the G29... All in a good way... I will be giving it a go on GT7 for the first time on the weekend to put a time down on the kart TT... Probably not competitive but more trial and error with settings.

Anyway, back to my very quick session on the controller on the weekend... 9 miles was enough for me, then went onto a circuit experience that I only had silver on to finish the daily mileage off.

Oh and I just threw a quick TT inspired livery together to match the track 😉

I will be back to diving in soon, once all the work life dies down again.

 

[Pigems]

Been about 3 weeks since I last played GT, started at this one last night and had some rust to shake off for sure. Got down to a .6 last night, then got that down to a .3 tonight with some more laps in. I think I can do a .1, or maybe a 0.0 on a really good lap. Gonna keep at it, I love the karts in GT.

 

[linksracer]

Achievement unlocked: Sub 15s

Still another tenth in this lap as I badly missed the apex on the second half of T5 (before the pitlane) and I can definitely also take the chicane better, this lap had a slight lift still.

Also still loosing a bulk of time in T2 trying to get on the power. Might need to readjust the exit of T1 to make sure I can have the car rotated correctly for the exit of 2.

Will have another 2 chances to get that top 100, fingers crossed!

 

[Spec-ECU]

Ugh. Foot's barely in the door. Steering window's not even a window. It's just a slit.

Time to put the work in.

 

[eggmann]

I blew past P10000 and even P5000. I'm steering a bit less, tapping the brake in a couple more spots, and using MT ABS Weak CSA Strong. I'm on Logitech G Pro with default rotation.

 

[Lightpilgrim]

I turned on CSA strong with the kart and I have to say, it is almost like using cheat mode. Not the most satisfying feeling having to rely on such assists though

View attachment 1438448

But you go faster with it?

 

[DDK-Racing]

I turned on CSA strong with the kart and I have to say, it is almost like using cheat mode. Not the most satisfying feeling having to rely on such assists though

View attachment 1438448

Interesting. Right now I do this TT without assists (ABS weak) and got my time down to a 49.669, optimal being .575 so I have a little 1/10th to gain... Will try the CSA and see if it does the trick for me.
I was fearing the kart but actually really like it. Think this is the one I put most effort in so far...
Maybe because I used to race karts when I was a kid 😅 😅

As for the ghost. I always play against a ghost. Usually Tidgney or MetalGear, 0.1s ahead and reset every sector. Also have a button mapped to remove it when it bothers me. I find it helpfull to be able to follow their lines better, spot little gains in brake and turn-in points...

 

[zjn]

You all made good points about the ghost. I usually choose a "followable" ghost. Depending on my performance and on the way the splits are done very fast ghost may run away too early. When I am more confidend I switch to faster ghost.

Sometimes I use may own ghost, not for learning, but for measuring what I have learned. In some TT the learning curve is quite linear over the single lap, in other I have important improvement in some turns while staying quite the same in others.

So far I think these are my weakness:
I can follow a ghost but I'm not good enough to extract info from it. I'm not saying I spot nothing, but I'm quite sure I spot very little compared to what if available
I'm quite fast to reach the 90% of my potential, but from there I think I lack of strategy/strategic thinking. Usually my improvement from this 90% are coming from specific turns (where I was below this 90%) or confidence coming from repetition. What I think back I see that I should have put more attention to my positioning there, my speed at turn X, my use of trail braking here, or throttle there. But it's all coming after, during the session I don't do this. Is it because I feel I have to delivery over the next hour and cannot spend time to elaborate these additional thoughts? Is it because my CPU is already running 100%? Is it because it's an habit? It's probably mostrly the latter, which involves lot of mental energy to correct!

About the ghost distance: my standard is 0.3s + sector regeneration when I ghost Tidge. It's not disturbing because he generates gap instantly, but probably the far the ghost is the difficult is to appreciate the differencies. I will try to lower to gap, maybe going to 0.1s and improve my peripheral vision perk. Hopefully this will teach me something.

 

[half_sourly]

But it's all coming after, during the session I don't do this.

That is good self-reflection and an issue many face. The way I try to overcome it is to focus on one corner or thing at a time. That is why I love the current Kart at Brands Hatch Indy combination. There are only four crucial points - Paddock, Druids, Stirling and Clark. I'll watch a video (YouTubers first, then download top available replay and post to my YouTube so that I can watch in slow motion), try to understand what they do at Paddock, then spend 50 miles just trying to replicate that. Next day I'll move to Druids and with luck the lessons and improvements at Paddock become more automatic - I can do them with less thought and attention than the day before.

Take that approach over the longer term and things that you have to think about now will just be part of what you do; you won't have to think about trail braking, looking further ahead, gentler inputs, etc.

As an aside, sometimes taking the focus-on-one-corner approach relaxes you for other corners and you suddenly find more time.

 

[imChris]

But you go faster with it?

Yes around 1.5 tenths

 

[Eliminatorek]

Decided to celebrate promotion at work with a little gift for myself .
View attachment 1437956
Yet to try GT7, but played a little EA WRC and difference coming from G29 is just massive. If you guys have any recommendations on settings/resources/anything else please share.

Thanks for the suggestion @330_D! I was looking for the FF settings for different games and it seems that every corner of the web has a different favourite settings, so it gets a little overwhelming at times. Will defintely start with these for GT7.

You should be happy with that choice. I might share some of my DD Pro settings in it's thread so follow there.
FFB is tricky to find yourself a comfy settings. But once you do you should enjoy and progress from that.
Sometimes it is worth to come back to automatic settings, but recent PD update is not a case, one or two back it was really working fine on AUTO.

I see a couple of streamers moaning that slides are impossible to catch, but you can see 2 things, they aren’t fast enough in adding the opposite lock and typically you can already hear and see that the wheels have completely lost traction by the time they are trying to correct it. It’s typically too late (I know this first hand when I rolled my M3)

Trickiness with Kart on the Wheel is like I said before - you can drive smoothly on higher wheel angles like 600+. But it is too much lock to save/correct the spins. You can do it more easly on lower angles, but then driving is more nervous and less precise in hotlapping manner.

 

[zaxs]

This cart on Indy is good refreshment...
Wasn't driving a lot for now (playing Wukong), but my safe silver maybe can go to gold if I'm good enough.

 

[KK78]

A further minor improvement at Norwand... maybe there is a little more time to be had

 

[Spec-ECU]

Curious: This is my first TT with the kart, but I presume there had been other kart TTs before. Are the number of participants for kart TTs usually this high? Or is it more that there are more people able to Gold it much more easily than other TTs? Or is it a case of both?

I hadn't seen this many players within Gold, even at the preliminary stages. But I'm only about 15 TTs old at this point. 🙂

 

[NAXEHT]

Curious: This is my first TT with the kart, but I presume there had been other kart TTs before. Are the number of participants for kart TTs usually this high? Or is it more that there are more people able to Gold it much more easily than other TTs? Or is it a case of both?

I hadn't seen this many players within Gold, even at the preliminary stages. But I'm only about 15 TTs old at this point. 🙂

No kart TT prior. Low speed and short, easy track. Easy gold brings attention and spreads the word.

 

[Spec-ECU]

No kart TT prior. Low speed and short, easy track. Easy gold brings attention and spreads the word.

Those are fighting words! I feel targeted! 😭

P.S. Only regret I have (so far) in all the years I've been doing moto trackdays is not making it down SoCal to turn laps at Willow Springs. 😔

 

[half_sourly]

I hadn't seen this many players within Gold

Pretty standard level of gold at the moment.

Courtesy of @crome plug-in:

11.5% is only a bit above the all-time average of 10.3%. 146k participants is a lot, but not most by a long shot. Recently we've been around 180k a lot - see Main Table under spoiler.

 

[Lightpilgrim]

Was able to improve a bit to 50.180.
I have to say that compared to Suzuka this one is much easier. I put so much more effort onto Suzuka TT and still ended up 0.9 off GOLD. Here I was able to get to within GOLD relatively effortless (compared to Suzuka). Unless the times will tumble and to get GOLD you would need a sub 0:50 lap.

I will still try to get into 0:49…

 

[Spec-ECU]

I made it a little easier for myself. Not with any assists, but I gave it a go on the D-pad for faster steering corrections. 😔

Whether or not this is enough to secure the Gold doesn't matter. Not satisfied until I go quicker with my T150. 😤

 

[Lightpilgrim]

I made it a little easier for myself. Not with any assists, but I gave it a go on the D-pad for faster steering corrections. 😔

View attachment 1438650

Whether or not this is enough to secure the Gold doesn't matter. Not satisfied until I go quicker with my T150. 😤

D-Pad is dual sense controller? Btw, what are your settings and assists for a controller?

 

[Famine]

D-Pad is dual sense controller?

D-pad is directional pad. This bit of a controller:

 

[Spec-ECU]

D-Pad is dual sense controller? Btw, what are your settings and assists for a controller?

I didn't change the settings between my wheel and the controller, so it's 8 for the sensitivity as of using my wheel last night. No assists on other than ABS like usual. That being said, the controller feels more forgiving than the wheel...

Sorry for the confusion; I've always called the controller the D-Pad since forever. 😝

 

[Wilsonson]

Is there a way to see what the fastest time with a controller is? I just started GT7 after years of not playing a GT game and I managed to sneak into gold on both events in about 3 hours of play time (but that Evo lap better not get even one hundredth faster). I don't feel like I'm especially fast at all, but it'd be neat to know if I'm any good actually.

If you can get gold in time trials after years away from the game then you're definitely good in the general sense.

Hi,

I can't find any website that tells you this information. That said, if you look in here...

Time Trial - Results and Community Leader Boards

Last update to this post 20 March 2025 This thread presents the results of GT7 Time Trials (Lap Time Challenges), along with community scoreboards. I used to post the results every week in the main thread set up by @seadog777, but as interest and participation have grown, so has the desire for...

www.gtplanet.net

Then look at the leaderboard - generated by the venerable and coffee loving Half-sourly! - That list contains information on who is using a wheel or a controller. There may be a website that offers more for you. I can't find one though.

Hope that helps some.

Regards.

Ian.

Also...

Managed to shave another few hundreds off this afternoon. Nordwand time now sits at 1:15:4xx - That lap was saved by just one pixel and the tyre valve dust cap!!! The margins at the top of these leaderboards are microscopic.

Happy lapping folks.

If you want to compare yourself to the GT planet leaderboard which is essentially the regular posters in this thread here then no. But that's because we have many aliens here who are totally insane.

Me and many others here are also in the 2-3% club like you.

 

[Stormbreaker]

This TT is the definition of the world FUN 😁 and the second top 50 (for now) in a row!!
#BACK2BACK

 

[Dan_Tes]

This TT is the definition of the world FUN 😁 and the second top 50 (for now) in a row!!
#BACK2BACK
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View attachment 1438682

Agreed! Great fun if you can get your wheel set up right.

I’d love to get into the 48s as I do think there’s a tenth of a second hiding somewhere but it’d have to be the perfect lap and I don’t have much time to commit!

 

[Carlos Fandango]

Had a quick 30 miles in the Kart last night... quickly got down to a 49.345 (4 hundredths off my best) but stalled out after that. Like @Dan_Tes , I feel that there's still a tenth lurking, just my tenth is different from his ...in reality, I'd like to get to 49.25 which is only a 0.055 improvement on my current PB, but would move me up 60 places on the leaderboard

 

[NAXEHT]

Those are fighting words! I feel targeted! 😭

P.S. Only regret I have (so far) in all the years I've been doing moto trackdays is not making it down SoCal to turn laps at Willow Springs. 😔

Top tier track, man. My spiritual racing home.

I made it a little easier for myself. Not with any assists, but I gave it a go on the D-pad for faster steering corrections. 😔

View attachment 1438650

Whether or not this is enough to secure the Gold doesn't matter. Not satisfied until I go quicker with my T150. 😤

You see? Not that tricky. In any case, that’s super secure. The top three right now are all kart specialists just fighting for thousands at this point. The time needed to knock a 2,5% time out doesn’t exist.