I Raced Against 140,000 People in GT7 to See How Fast I Am

While I added another 18,641 miles (30,000 km) to my daily driver each year, I've only driven my FC RX-7 for less than 2,485 miles (4,000 km) since 2018. Only a small percentage of that equates to driving at the track, so I'm pretty rusty at racing. That includes drifting, as I haven't driven a proper drift car in circa 10 years now.

That will change later this month, but I'll report back with the full story. Even though I have a minimum sim racing setup at home, I don't get to use it as often, either. Still, I consider myself quite fast, at least on tracks I am familiar with (Nordschleife and Tsukuba). I recently tested Assetto Corsa Competizione's 24H of Nurburgring DLC, and it was pretty hardcore if you want to have the raw experience.

Gran Turismo 7 feels a bit more tame by comparison, so it can be more fun if life's problems already stress you out. After my recent Tsukuba Corvette runs, I wanted to see how I'd compete against real people. A few months ago, I tried the game's Online Time Trial mode and noticed over 100,000 people tried to set a fast lap.

So, I powered up the PS5 and checked the latest challenge. Given that F1 had just recently held a race there, I immediately set my eyes on the event at Suzuka Circuit in Japan. The problem is that my experience with this race track is limited at best. I don't think I've driven for more than 20 laps here in my entire life.

So I knew that would be a problem from the beginning. My next problem was that I had never driven the McLaren Ultimate Vision Gran Turismo. And it's easy to tell how fast of a vehicle it is just by seeing the photos. I looked up the whole thing and noticed many people saying this is one of the toughest Gran Turismo 7 time trials in a while.

One day after the event went live, people were already doing sub-1:40 laps. On my second lap, I managed to go around the 3,6 mile (5,807-meter) layout at 1:54.883. I looked at the rankings and was the 114,646th fastest driver out of almost 117,000 people. That was a huge shock, but I realized I was just beginning to scratch the surface.

One guy from Japan had already established dominance by lapping Suzuka in 1:36.642, which is strangely the exact performance Pierre Gassly had during the F1 race this year. I wonder if he will improve that result or if anyone can defeat him before the event ends on April 18. My goal from the get-go was to finish inside the Top 10,000 drivers in the game.

After a good night's sleep, I woke up thinking about how to improve. After putting on my VR headset, I discovered a pace I didn't know I was capable of. After seven laps, my rhythm was almost nine seconds faster than the previous attempt. That meant I had gone up in the rankings to P84,089, which was still pretty daunting.

While cornering, you must be extra careful with your throttle inputs in 1st and 2nd gears. As a result, short-shifting could prevent you from spinning out, which I had experienced quite often in my first few sessions. I'm usually the fastest on my second or third lap of any given session, and then I just became too frustrated that I couldn't improve the pace.

Even more so, I finally decided against using the ghost as it's confusing. I was too cautious with Suzuka's 130R corner as I downshifted from sixth gear to fourth. And I decided to start using fifth on my next attempts. I know I didn't mention this yet, but this McLaren packs 1,134 bhp while weighing 1,984 lbs (900 kg). So it's quite a handful, especially through the S section leading up to the Dunlop corner. That's where I struggled the most, not knowing if using third or fourth would be the best option.

The whole thing feels like a rollercoaster, and racing with the PS VR2 amplifies the immersion. On my second day of racing, I noticed I'd need to reach a 1:39.541 lap time to get the two million credits. Some 40 miles (65 km) and 11 laps later, I thought going through turn one in sixth gear would be the best thing to do.

I remember seeing something like this in the Netflix "Drive to Survive" show. Slowing down to third gear for Turn 2 and then moving up to fourth, the revs were lower than before, and I felt the grip had improved. I stopped the clock at 1:45.807 and went up to P 73,503. Flying by almost 11,000 people for improving that little was insane. I was now just 9.48% away from the top drivers, giving hope I would unlock the 250,000 credits if things wouldn't change by the end of the trial period.

Many YouTubers have posted their fastest laps, explaining how they had reached that performance. It felt like cheating for a bit, but then I figured I was just analyzing data. I needed eight more laps to get down to 1:43.297; taking the inside line of the last corner is quite helpful. If you need a sense of how fast this car is, I couldn't even look at the speedometer throughout my 124 miles (200 km) session.

But at one point, I noticed my top speed was 217 mph (350 kph). With my latest result, I was now in the Top 32,000 drivers in the game, which was much better than my initial results. But I was still a long way from my goal. I thought loading the fastest guy's ghost would help, but it only humiliates you and drains all hope in your spirit. I decided to take another break, planning to return in two days to see how things have evolved.

One thing's certain: people were still pouring in, and the Ranking Board now had over 123,000 names on it. Today, I decided to go at it one more time. By now, that list is now at 140,000 contenders and still growing. And that leaves me down in 35,610th place. I somehow forgot I could use DRS with this car, and I thought this would significantly improve my lap time.

After grinding away at it for 30 more minutes, I finally improved, but not by much: 1:42.590. I am now in the Top 26,000 players in the world, but I doubt it will last until the event is over. Maybe I'll give it another go on the final day. How about you, how fast did you go in this new Time Trial?