Time trial is a pretty common and straightforward thing when it comes to racing: go on track and go as fast as you can. While it is often used as a means of practice or testing, sometimes it can be its own competition, and this is an approach Polyphony Digital has chosen to offer. Let’s see how this works in GT7.
How To Find And Enter Time Trial Events
In Gran Turismo 7, Time Trials are found in Sport Mode, which is only accessible after you have completed the café menu book #9. They have their sub-section there, alongside Daily Races and Championships.
At least 2 Time Trial Events will be available at all times. They last 2 weeks and are renewed each week in a staggered schedule. Sometimes, special events will also be featured, with special in-game rewards and/or an associated contest.
Select the one you want to run, and then pick a suitable car. It can come from your garage, but the game also allows you to loan an eligible car for free (unless it’s the rare case where tuning is allowed).
How GT7 Time Trials Work
Quite simply, all you have to do is jump on the track and run laps until you’re satisfied with your effort. Your best lap time is registered and saved in the global leaderboard, and at the end of the 2 weeks, if your time is good enough, you may earn some credits. Your gains will be determined by how your best lap compares to the World Record. If you’re within 3%, you’ll get a gold medal and 2 million credits!
If at any point, your time is in the global top 10, the replay of your lap will be automatically uploaded to the server and be accessible to everyone else to watch or load as a ghost.
Improving Your Pace
Time Trials are a good test of skill and a great way to measure your progress. Gran Turismo gives plenty of targets to set as your current goal and several tools to help you reach it.
The first thing we advise you to do is set your Multi-Functional Display to the lap and sector times display. It will show you your sector times, the gap compared to your best ones, and your optimal lap time. This will give you good references and help you when you’re hesitant about different lines.
The second thing is to watch the fast guys replays, and load one as a ghost. You can set the ghost to have an offset so it appears in front of you, and you can elect to have it reset at every sector, so you’re not completely left in the dust after half a lap. Still, if you’re far from the top times, it is best to start with a slower ghost if you can find one, and work your way up progressively. You can also have your own best time’s ghost running at the same time: the comparison between the two can be interesting to observe from behind.
Delta For GT7
Finally, our telemetry app, Delta for GT7, will allow you to go into finer details and analyse your driving precisely, corner by corner. With our latest update, you can even load any replay you have saved from any session to use as a reference – including the GT7 Pro drivers’ data! In the example below, I’m comparing my first lap with my best lap (represented by the yellow lines).
This was the first time I drove this car with these tyres on this track (Dragon Trail Gardens reversed), and the quadruple left-hander (T3 to T6) is a highlight of the lap here.
It is challenging to figure out the correct approach to that complex, but the telemetry here tells me a more gradual approach to braking allowed me to maintain a higher average speed through that section, compared to a more aggressive “stomp the brake once and let the car glide into it” method. We can also notice overall that I initially didn’t use enough trail braking.
Not only will this help you improve your position in the leaderboards and get those sweet GT7 credits, but this type of analysing will help you detect any bad habits you have, and over time correct them. So don’t skip Time Trials, they’re your first step to success!
