All Good Streaks Come To An End

It was two hours to midnight on a Wednesday night; the dying hours of a two week online time trial like any other in the world of Gran Turismo 7. But for a few dozen of us, it's more than just a time trial. There's that little bit more on the line and the weight and expectation to succeed that grows that little bit heavier as the weeks go by and compatriots slowly fell by the wayside.

In the middle of 2022 a journey began for a bunch of us in GT7 that I simply called The Streak. The Streak is the challenge of always getting within the gold time threshold on the weekly online time trial: that being within 3% of the world record time. Starting with a time trial at the Alsace circuit using the Suzuki Escudo Pikes Peak Special, more than two hundred and thirty time trails have taken place using as much of the car and track roster as possible, and rewarding players in the process with a credit payout and that little tally marker when they enter the Sport Mode screen.

I have the privilege of being fast enough to be within the gold threshold for these time trials, having been able to rub shoulders with the best North America has to offer on GT since the early days of the GT World Series. However I was never in it for a position on the leaderboard, I was in it for the freedom that the rewarding credits provided. A free two million credits per week without needing to grind otherwise is a massive luxury, and one I used to it's fullest by allowing me to fully enjoy the sandbox that is available in GT7. For me, it simply made sense to get a gold result in the time trial before realizing that keeping The Streak alive was a game and challenge in it of itself.

The actual challenge of those time trials would come and go, as I would be able to get into that 3% threshold to the world record with some buffer usually in one session. There were some more prickly combinations throughout the years that demanded more time and effort: the McLaren MP4/4 at Suzuka challenge was a notorious one for demanding skip shifting from third to fifth to avoid the massive time lost shifting up and to mitigate turbo lag while the Toyota GR Yaris at Barcelona RX trial had an absurd talent gap with how narrow the optimal line was while maintaining momentum in the gravel section.

I would persist and continue to get gold results in the time trials, and I would realize that I had something for this. I am not a time trialist, and in all honesty I despise the act for how much the focus on ultimate lap time by any means necessary has taken away from the pure joy of driving and racing wheel to wheel. In this circumstance though I had outside motivation and a reason to be in my own world; where it's just me, the car, the track, and the clock. The reward for when I did bring it all together was to simply bypass the grinding that would otherwise be required in Gran Turismo 7, and that was an offer I couldn't refuse.

Eventually, I would figure it out; I would figure it out for all of them. I would need to figure every car and track out if The Streak was meant to stay alive. If the car drove horribly, I would still need to figure it out. If the track was narrow or had abysmal track limit detection, I would still need to figure it out. Keeping The Streak alive was now the challenge with my coffers filled to the brim.

Except this time, I ran out of time to figure it out.

The real bogey car and track combinations are the high powered all-electric vehicles more often than not. Partial throttle in the middle through to the exit of the corners would direct the bulk of the torque to the front outside wheel too much when it's already functioning at it's natural limit with how much work it's doing in the turn. Braking would often be an issue, as motor regeneration isn't significantly assisting in braking resulting in the longest braking zones of any of the time trials with an ABS system that isn't consistent in how much it intervenes. The glue to this situation is an issue these cars all have in the real world: being their weight. The amount the weight would shift laterally meant that they were often sluggish to turn-in properly and be able to keep a clean wheel through the rest of the act of taking a corner with how sensitive on throttle they are. EVs struggle in particular with the tire simulation in Gran Turismo not "digging in" while having a stiff construction, making it too easy to get out of the optimal contact patch. And then you're telling me that some have around two thousand horsepower on tap and are four wheel drive? And it's on the sport soft compound in this case?

Oh brother..

Time trial number 231 would be the newly added Xiaomi Vision Gran Turismo at the similarly new Sportland Sugo, and the combination of factors made this time trial a doozy. It's two thousand horsepower in a forty-five hundred pound frame, aerodynamically chiseled to perfection to push the limits of what's currently possible in the world of electric supercars. It doesn't have an overboost function like the Hyundai Ioniq 6 N does when it was used at the Nurburgring a month prior, which wasn't disabled for some reason, but it does have a F1-style drag reduction system instead. The track for the time trial is narrow which requires precision on corner entry, and way more patience than Super GT and Super Formula would have you believe on it's awesome 110R uphill corner to finish the lap. The bulk of the corners are all slow to medium-slow speed which is especially nasty with the amount of torque that's instantly available on demand. A little too much power application and the outside front tire gets overwhelmed, and you plow wide and lose time. You could feel the left front tire fighting for it's life as you tried to dial in the power and dial back the amount of steering input as 110R straightened out; the grass on the exit on driver's right is incredibly inviting. The previously mentioned usage of the sport soft compound tires would wrap the situation with a dastardly bow, as it was time to try to figure it out and keep The Streak alive.

That was the stage being set at 10 PM last Wednesday heading into the dying hours of the time trial. I had to figure all that out. The time to beat to be within that gold threshold was a 1:18.752, though in those final hours it was under threat to drop even more with the world record being contested at the same time. That first hour of the session was a slog, struggling with the Xiaomi washing wide on middle of the corner when I breathed on the throttle and lacking confidence under braking on the back straight. In my mind, I was a mile off and lacking confidence to be able to punch it coming out of corners. The other issue early on was navigating Sugo's S Curve: a sharp left-entry chicane after a tiny straightaway which featured mountainous curbs on each side. It was the lap killer early on, as clobbering those curbs head on would slam the springs to their maximum compression and spit me out off the track on the other side. The trick would be to abuse the track limits on the exiting right side of the chicane, after keeping a cleaner approach on the left side on entry.

With one hour down, I was three tenths of a second away from the threshold. I was struggling because I was breathing on the throttle on entry to middle apex on the two corners before the back straightaway and the two corners before 110R and causing the car to wash wide. I would get the right cadence for the car to hook up on one half of the track, but not the other and just couldn't get it to all come together over a single lap. With thirty minutes to go I would find another two tenths after figuring out the lap through the S Curve and having a better ghost lap to chase. I just needed to put it all together and let the lap times tumble.

My best time would drop again, to a 1:18.766. I was keeping pace with a ghost lap that was a 1:18.070 through to the end of the back straight, before putting just enough throttle in at turn 11 to wallow out wide from the power imbalance across the front wheels and sink back below the surface. I had ten minutes to go, around seven laps at the most left to try and find two hundredths of a second and fully figure it out. The difference if The Streak was to continue was a couple feet if you put my time and the gold threshold time head to head.

Those last ten minutes I was in a panic: I was overdriving and had forgotten the trick to the Xiaomi Vision Gran Turismo was to back it way down and be patient on the throttle. That zone and concentration I was in to get me within two hundredths of the time I needed to beat was gone. One last reset with three minutes to go and I completely overcooked turn 3, another reset and the reality upon starting another lap was that I wasn't going to finish it by the time the clock struck midnight.

I was out, my run with The Streak was over. Twenty-nine people remain.

Wednesday turned into Thursday, and the Sport Mode page on GT7 got updated with the traditional results screen for the time trial and the subsequent credits payout. I ended up 2708th overall, silver ranked and with an extra one million credits in my account. I managed to get 232 consecutive gold times in the online time trials before the first and decisive blemish. I even managed to be within the 1.5% platinum bonus threshold for the Olympic esports time trial, though it just remains as a gold marker on the tally. Regardless of anything else, it is a remarkable personal achievement that I was able to keep it going for that long and kept up with the very best for as long as I did.

In those final moments, a wave of relief came across me as I sat in my Playseat Challenge foldable racing chair. I had done everything I could in that moment, and the pressure of having to hold onto The Streak for the last few years was letting go. I passed it along to my friends on Discord that I was out, and that I am free.

That time trial sucked as you could imagine; the nature of the high-powered, all-electric cars in GT7 finally caught up to me. I couldn't enjoy the moment of being able to drive the near future of electric supercars at an incredible road course in lieu of the added pretense of the situation, and the nature of time trials that are claimed to mean so much but amount to so little.

The Streak gave me an unbelievable privilege in being able to forego grinding, sidestep the incomplete economy at launch, and ignore the least invasive micro-transactions in all of gaming to be able to fully explore the virtual museum that is Gran Turismo 7. In putting in the time and losing sight of the reverence I wish to explore by chasing a objective that goes against the idea of sim racing being post-modernist, the door opened as wide as it can to show you what's truly possible when the pressure was finally released.

And as I said on my first GTPlanet post in two years when their weekly report came through the morning after, "GT7 is pretty good when you take the pressure off. 🫡"