Not a surprise.
GT can't compete with ACC or IR in terms of physics, damage models, tyre models, ...
And the cars are outdated, especially for the departments they want/need for an eSports like GT2/3/4.
They had a very poor launch with gt7, way too long struggling with stupid bugs and performance problems (lobbies etc...)
I don't say ACC or IR don't or never had issues, but not at the scale GT7 was struggling.
GT/PD just didn't enough efforts to stay in for this and lost.
For me personally, GT7 is focussing in a wrong way and ignoring it's user base.
It should have been an hommage to the series and be the best version ever.
But it doesn't.
I can understand an organization like FIA would not be interested to have a game as GT7 in it's current state as a partner.