So 5 months ago i rage quit playing GTSport, but im bored of other games now. A quick browse of this forum and its not looking good, with the same complaints of a bad penalty system and seriously dirty drivers floating around. A couple of quick questions. 1. i played race A last night and my clutch and shifter had no effect, have they modified this for everyone now to disable the advantage in shifting manual users had? and 2. has the slowdown penalty area actually improved racing? and 3. the only race that appeals to me this week is race B, have the Red Bull Ring track limits been fixed?
It depends what level you race in. If you mostly get in races with the same DR and don't mind door banging than it's do-able. It's not a contact free sport anymore as penalties only trigger when someone gets forcibly bumped off road. Small nudges don't count. Bumps that push you wide so the other car can pass don't count. Penalty times are lower as well now and still in no way compensate for ending up in a sand trap,
With different DR in a room, the lower DR still gets the benefit of the doubt, or rather the higher DR is more likely to end up with SR Down and time penalty. It still happens that you get penalized when the car in front screws up, spins and you can't avoid them as they swipe you off the track.
Track limits are more lenient as well now. Short cut penalties are standardized to 0.5 sec, sometimes you can trigger a 1.0 sec penalty or 1.5 even. Yet no more 8.3 sec for nicking a bit of the inside at high speed. Beware that the penalty zone isn't all that balanced. Last week on Suzuka a 1.0 sec penalty would lose you 2.3 real seconds, 3 sec penalty would lose you 5.6 seconds.
The penalty zone has improved racing on the track. No more slowing down and ghosting / unghosting in the race. However be careful at the penalty zone as those ghost can hit you. As soon as the timer is done yet the other cars are still slow and appear ghosted, they actually aren't for you. You can collide with them without any effect to the ghosted car, except you get SR down and lose most of your speed. Some people have caught on and use this to block people in the penalty zone. With multiple cars serving penalties it becomes a high speed moving chicane zone.
So is it actually improved over all. 1 big step forward (penalty zones), 2 little steps back (more lenient penalties, ghosting issues in penalty zone)
Effect on the track: A lot of bumping and grinding in corners, but less dive bombing.
I guess I'll go dress up the F1500. The last time I drove that was at Interlagos almost a year ago. That was a bump fest.
. Good luck out there today everyone, Happy Monday! 
