The Nations Cup is one of the two main Gran Turismo official esports series. As the name implies, it tries to represent multiple nations and oppose to the best simracers from their respective countries. Let’s see how that works.
The Online Season
Everything starts from the comfort of your home. In Sport Mode, you will find a section dedicated to the World Series, which includes Nations Cup events. In between official seasons, you will find exhibition seasons, which are good to get familiarised with the whole concept. The game will automatically prompt you to register and ask to fill in your personal information the first time you visit this menu each season.
Nations Cup’s online season is an individual effort, as you try to reach the top of your country and region. Eligibility varies depending on where you are located, but in general, you need to have reached majority if you want to be able to participate in live events. Online seasons are open to everyone however.
Servers are divided between different Global Regions: North America, Central & South America, Europe / Middle East / Africa, Asia, Oceania. You will only race people from the same global region during the season, and all regions have completely separate rankings.
Your Driver Rating at the time of registration will decide which league you will race in. DR C or below gets you in the GT3 league, DR B gets you in GT2, while DR A or more gets you in the GT1 league, which is the only one that gives you a chance to qualify for the finals. Make sure you have progressed to a rating that feels adequate to your level before registering !
There are 4 tiers of ranking, including the global region ranking (Regional), national rankings (Domestic), and two levels of more local rankings (Main / Secondary Area). If you finish high enough in any of them at the end of the season, you will be rewarded with in-game credits rewards. Gold reward is obtained for being in the top 5%, Silver from top 25%, and Bronze from top 75%.
Regional rewards are higher than Domestic rewards, which are higher than Local rewards, and the GT1 league doubles the payouts compared to GT2 and GT3. They are all cumulative within a league though, which means you can get up to 9 million credits at the end of an online season.
The season is divided into multiple rounds (6 in 2024), and taking part in races is a similar process to Daily Races, but the number of sessions available is much more limited. Each round is hosted on a single day, with only a few slots open at predetermined hours – with the GT1 League having less of them (3 only for the 2024 Online season, compared to 10 slots for GT2 and GT3).
You can race every slot if you want, but only the last race you entered counts for your championship points. So if you get good points in the first slot, running again is a gamble, putting you at risk of losing everything.
Points are calculated according to the average DR in the lobby and distributed according to finishing position. So the stronger the opponents, the more points are up for grabs. On top of that, not all rounds count towards the final rankings, with only your best rounds being retained (in 2024, that was your top 3 best results over 6 rounds).
Regarding the race format, Nations Cup can be pretty much anything: race cars, road cars, open or restricted tuning, full pace sprint or management race… Anything goes, so versatile drivers will be rewarded. Don’t skip rounds either: it is difficult to predict how interesting they will be for you in terms of points, unless you’re a top or second split GT1 driver with a good knowledge of what’s popular or not.
The Live Events
The best drivers from the online season get selected to participate on stage in Live Events and compete for the World Championship. Of course, you need to fit within eligibility criteria, and the number of spots available per country is limited. As that number is not consistent between regions, and has also evolved from one year to another, it’s better to check for your particular case on Gran Turismo’s official website as a new season is announced.
The live format of Nations Cup has also switched back and forth over the years, between a purely individual championship, and a team championship with 3 drivers racing together. 2024 Nations Cup is currently back to the individual format, a decision met with a lot of criticism after the success of 2023’s teams competition, so we cannot predict how the 2025 edition will shape up at this stage.
For 2024, only one Online Season was used to select the 12 drivers who would take part in this year’s 4 Live Events. Round 1 to 3 were hosted respectively in Montreal, Prague and Tokyo, while the upcoming World Finals are scheduled to happen in Amsterdam – the city where Polyphony Digital’s European office is located – on December 7th and 8th.
All drivers travel expenses are managed and covered by Polyphony Digital, and get to race in standardised rigs with Fanatec GT DD Extreme kits in front of an audience. Each round features a qualifying session and two races, with race 1’s results counting as starting order for race 2.
Top 6 in each round before the World Finals scored points that will add up to their final score, with the Amsterdam Live Event being effectively its own mini-championship, with the final race using the RedBull X2014 Competition car – a “what if” concept designed by Adrian Newey to represent what he would build if F1 was unrestricted. While this provides a decent advantage to some drivers, everyone is still in line for the title of Nations Cup World Champion.
Live Events broadcasts are accessible directly from the game, and also on Gran Turismo’s official Youtube channel in multiple languages (English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese), with commentators coming from the racing and simracing world such as Jimmy Broadbent and Tom Brooks in the English booth. You can even get in-game rewards for watching and predicting the winners!
The Top Drivers
This year’s Nations Cup grid mostly features returning talents. Let’s be clear from the start: all of them are extremely fast, even though some of them stand out for various reasons.
Kylian Drumont, current leader of the season, appeared in 2022 and immediately showed incredible pace. He was instrumental in helping team Subaru grab the top spot of Manufacturer Series, an impressive feat for his first year in this competitive setting. He has struggled with race strategy earlier this year, but redeemed himself in Tokyo.
Jose Serrano and Coque Lopez proudly represent Spain, which built up an incredibly active community in recent years. Spain has been holding the Nations title for the past 2 years, with Coque winning the most controversial title in 2022, and teaming up in 2023 with Josete and Pol Urra to keep that trophy home. He has some experience racing motorbikes in the national Spanish championship, which gave him enough character to not be afraid of getting elbows out at critical moments and gambling on stewards being lenient. Coque also drove for the 2021 Champion Manufacturer, Toyota.
“Josete” Serrano was known to be incredibly fast for a while in the community with great successes in IGTL, but only turned 18 last year. Since his arrival, he has shown a pace overall even superior to Coque’s, and already shows a lot of maturity despite his recent arrival in World Series.
Takuma Miyazono is a World Series veteran, often regarded as a strategist after he forced a rule change by being the first driver to attempt a single lap stint on hard tyres with great success. Only Igor Fraga matches his number of 4 World Champion titles (1x TGR, 1x Nations, 2x Manufacturers). Miyazono is always in the fight for a podium.
Valerio Gallo is the driver every Ferrari fan wishes they had on their side. Propelled onto the competitive scene after surprising everyone by finishing second only to Mikail Hizal in his first IGTL event, Vale scored a brilliant Nations title in 2021 and has since then built his own esports team, Outplayed Racing, which is rapidly growing. His results in live events in the past couple years aren’t reflective of his talent, but his focus on Manufacturers Cup and his unconditional love for Honda penalised him in a setting where the NSX Gr.3 suffered from an unfavourable BoP and temperamental handling. The simple fact he managed to keep Honda qualified is a feat in itself.
Kaj de Bruin may not be as recognized as others on this list, but he is incredibly at ease with the RedBull, which is a critical car in Nations Cup. He may have the best raw pace of everyone with Gran Turismo’s flagship single seater, and he will be at home in Amsterdam, so count on him to put up a show.
Takuma Sasaki has been very successful in Japanese national competitions, before he could enter the World Series. Sasaki still lacks a bit of consistency compared to Miyazono and suffered from bad luck, but he’s got good pace, and more experience now.
Robert Heck has been fairly dominant over the North American server in the latest years. Capable of a good pace, he his however very aggressive in general, which has led him to his demise multiple times due to incidents and penalties.
Guy Barbara is Oceania’s best driver without a shadow of a doubt. Still relatively new to the World Series, the current season has not been kind to him so far, but he won the last 2 IGTL events, against both current and past World Series champions. While his one lap pace might be a few hair below the fastests in this list, his IGTL races have proved he has great qualities for endurance racing.
Angel Inostroza is an incredibly talented driver, up there with the very best. He lost the 2022 nations title in a controversial incident with Coque Lopez in the last sector of the last race, and suffered important leg injuries in 2023 after being ran over by a car while riding a bike. Although he didn’t score any points this year, he definitely is champion material.
Calen Roach is a new player in the American scene, and the youngest driver currently on the grid. His presence here is a testimony to his potential, but he’s still learning the ways of live events.
Adriano Carrazza is the oldest driver of the bunch, and probably the most feared on track. “Didico” is super fast and takes no prisoners: he’s mostly famous for his ambitious divebombs, with his attempt at an overtake from several car lengths back into the Ford chicanes on Le Mans still being cited as an example in the community. If Adriano is in a pack, you can be sure it won’t be boring!
