The Cases For, And Against the 911 GT3 R

It's been seven months since last an individual car that was added to Gran Turismo 7 in an update was talked about at length here on Powerhouse Takahashi. The NISMO Skyline GT-R Z-Tune provided an ideal time and place to look back at how the sandbox nature of GT has changed for the better and now has been paired with the franchise's new ethos of being a virtual automotive museum at the same time. With each passing update, new cars get introduced to the museum that all make an impact to the exhibits in their own way, and potentially introduce new ones in the process. It cannot be understated that the most important car that was added to Gran Turismo 7 was the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra: being the first purely Chinese-made car added to the franchise, and won't be the last. But much like the Honda N-One RS that had to take a step back after the Nissan Qashqai Tekna e-Power was added in the same update as the Z-tune, the SU7 is being forced to take a step out of the spotlight through no fault of it's own.

The SU7 Ultra has found itself in the unfortunate position of being paired with two contemporary racecars as the additions from January's update; and one in particular that was top of mind of many who live and breathe Sport Mode. That car is the 992.2-generation Porsche 911 GT3 R.

In case it wasn't apparent by how I view the GT3 class in the opening of the last article, I am obviously very mixed at it's introduction into GT7. I am in the camp where these kind of racing cars, the racing they promote, and the attitudes that they've fostered and created within the sim racing community have made the genre worse as a whole and trying to force those ideologies and ideals into GT shows a level of disdain and uncaring for what makes Gran Turismo unique and special. At the same time, I understand that there can be and is a home for such racecars within Gran Turismo as long as there is actual effort put into how they're used in the single player, and they don't dominate the conversation for online multiplayer like they do with every other realistic racing game on the market. With Gran Turismo 7 having 500+ cars with tuning and modifications for almost all of them, there is so much more on offer across the whole experience if you get beyond just doing what iRacing, RaceRoom and Rennsport already do, but doing it in Gran Turismo instead. You should give tuning lobbies a try, or at least do the current Daily C event: which uses near-fully open tuning with set power/weight limits using the Toyota AE86s around Tsukuba.

Within Gran Turismo 7's single player, the Group 3 cars are used in the final event of the Menu Book progression before you get your first credits roll and do have a plethora of more general events to use them for beyond that. With sporadic exceptions, their usage in Sport Mode has been much of the same beyond the occasional weekly or GT World Series race that only allows a select few cars, but without any more bespoke work done to make as unique as possible of a experience out of a class of cars that fundamentally lack character on their own. There has been plenty of chances within both the lifetime of Gran Turismo Sport and GT7 to bring back old events from prior games and give them a new lease on life with new cars: such as the Stars and Stripes Championship allowing race cars only from the United States. Reviving old events would be the ideal way to use the current roster of race cars and fully flesh out the single player campaign, but Polyphony Digital has not followed through on this potential and left their usage only in more basic events. It's left too much to the imagination when this was the ideal time for Polyphony Digital to give a teaser of what is potentially possible, and results in new racecars being added having less meaning than they should in the single player.

Moving over to the multiplayer, every new racecar that gets added within the game's Group structure highlights long-standing issues that have existed since new racecars started being added to the groups in Gran Turismo Sport seven years ago. When GTS first launched, the four groups that were in the game were in a somewhat stable and sensible environment. Though balancing issues persisted between the hybrid and non-hybrid machinery in Group 1 and the different drive types available in Group 4, for the most part the game's Balance of Performance did work as intended even as more handling-focused cars were often disadvantaged due to the game's draft model. Issues with this structure began as Polyphony started to add cars to the groups and simply left it at that.

Online competitive systems need constant upkeep and curation for the quality of the racing to be maintained throughout, and the five groups within these games never get that beyond Balance of Performance adjustments. As more historic and varied cars got added, ensuring true balance was now an impossible task; and vehicles like the Toyota GT-One were now left to be one-track specials and forced to be in a structure that doesn't fit them at all. For these systems to work, more is needed to be done to ensure that all race cars have their place and worth everyone's time. Doing that would require completely rethinking the structures of Sport Mode, and for me that's the big thing that needs to happen before Group 3 in particular gets the time and attention that's demanded by the hardcore player base of realistic racing games. But of course they alone shouldn't be getting that kind of attention in a Gran Turismo game, that's what iRacing, RaceRoom and Rennsport are for.

For as much as I wish I could look at the Porsche 911 GT3 R only from the scope of what would it take for Gran Turismo to be better equipped for it's introduction, it's an impossibility. This is the GT that we have, and the one that we as players have to make the most of what we are given. We have to deal with the fact that Group 3 is now a disorganized mess where some manufactures have the advantage of multiple cars to choose from for the GT World Series Manufactures Cup. Porsche is the latest OEM to gain that advantage, but the GT3 R reveals itself as perhaps the most necessary follow-up within the Group structure we all have to deal with. It's predecessor within GT Sport and GT7 was the 2017 Porsche 911 RSR: initially the lone GTE car battling against real GT3 and similarly performing fictional racecars. GTE, while also a BOP class, made it's speed around a race track completely differently to it's GT3 counterparts: with a greater emphasis on aerodynamic efficiency and cornering performance though overall lap times remained similar. It was the original outlier within Gran Turismo Sport's Group systems before the McLaren F1 GTR was added to Group 3, and something needed to replace it eventually to make organized online Group 3 racing a cleaner endeavor to balance and host.

There is no doubt that the 911 GT3 R is going to get a lot of mileage out of players no matter what, though it remains lost in the quagmire of a class that doesn't really engage and challenge drivers in terms of racecraft. It's a must-have car for those who do offline racing against the ai using their own custom-designed liveries for the entire grid: with it being a major building block for replicating IMSA GTD and DTM grids or adding the Seven x Seven GT3 R to a Super GT GT300 roster.

For those a little more daring and willing to have fun, it can be equipped with a turbocharger which gives the 911 an additional 230 horsepower to play with. It's a teaser of how top-level GT cars should drive: it rockets out of slow corners and is still actively accelerating before major braking zones, though braking zones are still way too short and corner-entry speeds in slower corners are still way too high for sensible wheel to wheel racing. It is a big issue within real world road racing, though the solution is a fairly basic one: reduce the amount of rubber hitting the road. Braking zones increase and cornering speeds drop dramatically when you switch to the semi-slick sport compound or to the full road-going comfort tires that give a glimpse of a better type of GT racing. A type of racing where the drivers have to earn their paycheck instead of relying on the vast amounts of aerodynamic and mechanical grip to do most of the work for them. You actually have to slow down for Eau Rouge-Radillon and Blanchimont at Spa-Francorchamps now; as you're now fighting for your life the entire way in the best way possible. Grooved slicks in theory could work in the real GT3, LMP2, and Hypercar; and realistic racing games that provide that means to experiment give the opportunity to make better racing than what is currently happening in reality. In this case, it's pretty cool that you can make a theoretical better GT3 in Gran Turismo 7; though another 200 horsepower would be nice.

There is a hidden landmark of history that gets highlighted with the introduction of the 911 GT3 R to Gran Turismo 7, and it comes off the back of it being in the second consecutive month a GT3 car was added to the game. Both the 911 and the Ferrari 296 GT3 highlight a significant through-line in GT racing that only now Gran Turismo has been able to show. Though it hasn't been in the spotlight in recent times, much of this century's GT racing has been about this feud between Porsche and Ferrari in the class that began as Le Mans GT in 1999 before became N-GT, GT2, and finally ending up as GTE while both brands were focal points in the new GT3 that was launched in 2006. The current car list in Gran Turismo 7 showcases the road cars that would become those racecars produced by Porsche and by either Michelotto or Oreca, with the one exception being the lack of a Ferrari 360 Modena. That 25 year through-line in sportscars and in racing culminates with the 296 GT3 and the 992.2 911 GT3 R, and I hope to see that lineage be fully realized by Polyphony Digital in the future. It's an incredibly special exhibition that could be the pillar of Gran Turismo 7's virtual automotive museum.

While there are cases and justifications for the introduction of the Porsche 911 GT3 R and the Ferrari 296 GT3 into Gran Turismo 7, my forever concern is that it simply isn't enough for those who ignore the realities of the franchise. It's very common within far-right and fascist circles to constantly move the goalposts to more harmful and hateful policies when they were already given the policy concessions they yelled from the rafters for. This demand for more at the cost of a better world is something I see from hardcore realistic racing game devotees within those demands for racecars and features to suit from games that aren't built purely for them. Gran Turismo was never meant to be the be-all for hardcore racing with a focus on the latest and greatest racing cars, and any attempt to use Gran Turismo Sport at launch as the precedent that GT7 and GT8 should follow ignores the reality that GT Sport was a necessary reset after Polyphony Digital had mixed fortunes in their transition from developing for the Playstation 2 to the PS3. It ignores and discards what a Gran Turismo game should be, and discredits the work done by other franchises to tread the path that they're forever wanting.

Because if the Mark Whitelegges and Super GTs of the world only want to see the latest racing cars and nothing else in Gran Turismo:

iRacing, Rennsport, RaceRoom, Assetto Corsa Competizione, rFactor 2, Project Motor Racing and Le Mans Ultimate are all down the hall and to the left, waiting with open arms.

And please, don't harass game developers online when you don't get the Ferrari 499P you claim you've always wanted.