A new Gran Turismo 7 Online Time Trial starts today, as we see a rare week with road cars pulling double-duty on the two active events.
That said, “road car” only loosely describes the star car this week, though to be fair it is stuck right into the name. Porsche’s “Strassenversion” — literally “Street Version” — of the refreshed 911 GT1 is the weapon of choice, and there is one sitting in the Legends Cars dealer right now if you have the 10m credits required.
GT1 was a homologation class, requiring manufacturers to produce a road-going version in limited numbers order to go racing. Porsche therefore had to make a minimum of 25 examples of the GT1 — which was pretty much the back of a 962 prototype welded to bits of a 993 — for the road.
The bulk of these were the 996-based model, with a couple of earlier 993 prototypes and a later, one-off, 997-style car to homologate the GT1-98. It featured the same, mid-mounted, 3.2-liter, twin-turbo flat six as the race car, but slightly detuned to around 540hp rather than the 600hp of the racing car.
You’ll be able to put all of that to the road this week as the car is equipped with Racing Hard tires — automatically for any vehicle you borrow, although you’ll have to buy them for your own car — making most of the sweeping Alsace Village circuit a breeze, and more like a race car week.
It’s a long lap, mind, with the top times starting to break under the 1:53s, if only just. That sets the current gold marker at a 1:56.279, but we’re anticipating quite a bit of time to come here. Mid-1:52s seem likely, so you should be aiming for at least a 1:55.8 if you want to take the top prize this week.
One week still remains on the other time trial event, with seven days left to get your times in at the Nurburgring Sprint course in the rather slippery and satellite-delayed braking Hyundai Ioniq 5N.
The top times here have barely fallen — the record we wrote about last week would still be fourth on the leaderboard — and nobody’s broken into the 1:35s yet. It’s another tight cluster of times again, with second- and third-best tied. We wouldn’t rule out a very high 1:35.9 coming in late, with gold therefore sitting at a low 1:38.8.
In order to access the Online Time Trials, you’ll need to unlock Sport Mode, by completing Menu Book 9 (“Championship: Tokyo Highway Parade”) in the GT Cafe single player hub. As it’s just you against the clock and not a direct, head-to-head multiplayer event, PlayStation Plus is not required.
You’ll usually need to be within 3% of the fastest time globally once the event finishes in order to secure “gold” status and a 2m credit bonus prize. There’s smaller prizes of one million for being within 5%, and 250,000cr for bronze at 10% off.
The events update every Thursday, with each individual challenge usually remaining available for two weeks and the oldest of the two events being replaced each week. You can look forward to the next new Time Trial arriving at 0700 UTC on Thursday February 20.
Gran Turismo 7 Lap Time Challenge February 13 – Alsace Village
- Track: Alsace Village
- Car: Porsche 911 (996) GT1 Strassenversion – Garage/Rental Car
- Power/Weight/PP Limit: BOP (L)
- Tires: Racing Hard
- Settings: Fixed
Gran Turismo 7 Lap Time Challenge February 6 – Nurburgring Sprint
- Track: Nurburgring Sprint
- Car: Hyundai Ioniq 5N ’24 – Garage/Rental Car
- Power/Weight/PP Limit: BOP (L)
- Tires: Sports Hard
- Settings: Fixed
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