GTPlanet had a chance to catch up with Gran Turismo World Series racer, and unofficial Vegemite spokesman, Guy Barbara about his recent experiences in Montreal — including the highs, lows, new physics, and a little insight into life at the heart of the flagship event.

The Montreal event both teased the new physics for the upcoming Gran Turismo 7 1.49 update and used them — and it turns out that it was actually with surprisingly little warning.

As related by Guy, the players were told slightly ahead of the event in a special driver briefing but couldn’t actually practice to discover the foibles until arriving in Montreal. Unlike some other esports series, where participants use a special esports build, the players have access only to the public version of the game and only got to try the new physics out on the event’s rigs.

The changes aren’t entirely transformative, so home practice hasn’t gone wholly to waste, but there’s enough going on to make life tricky and catch out even the seasoned veterans of the GTWS as we saw on the stream. In Guy’s words, “everything’s faster”!

One of the core differences relates to tire wear, and with barely half an hour to practice for each race it threw many competitors for a loop with regards to tire strategy. Indeed one of the Nations Cup hot favorites, and polesitter, Kylian Drumont related to co-host Jules Hardy on the live stream as he waited to get into the rig for the final that he had no idea what his strategy would be!

That led to a variety of interesting calls — with varying results — as the drivers tried to push the softest tires as far as possible but without using the last few pixels of tread to avoid something that they referred to as “punctures”.

This refers to a new effect in the physics where the tire just straight gives up as it approaches the end of its useful life. Rather than being able to use it all up, Guy relates that you now get a little warning in terms of feel, at around 90% worn on the gauge, that the end is near before the grip drops off a cliff and you have nothing at all.

Although not entirely captured on the live stream, he was one of the drivers caught out by this in the Nations Cup, dropping the X2019 through turn one at Road Atlanta right as the tires came into this window of one lap too many in what he described as his worst live race performance to date.

We also saw the Australian racer involved in an unusual blue flag battle, thanks to the short lap and long pit lane at the track which brought the early two-stoppers out right into the lead battle — despite reported player warnings to event staff that this might happen.

That came off the back of one of his best in the Manufacturers Cup, where he took the AMG to fourth place overall to score three World Series points for the squad. The tire wear came into play here too, as Igor Fraga — whose Lexus was chewing through front tires for fun — took victory in part through an unusual triple-stop strategy.

It’s a fascinating insight into the inner circle of the Gran Turismo World Series, and we’ll be seeing Guy in action again with the rest of the Nations Cup drivers at Prague on Saturday August 10 — with a little more practice on the new physics which arrive in the public build on Thursday July 25!

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