Just had my best race ever in GT 7 and it's all thanks to Sophy.
A shot from the finishing line with me eeking out a win by less than a car's length.
It was a 15 minute race and I needed the first 10 minutes to get to the top 3 positions which was already thrilling enough, but then the last 5 minutes were an absolute spectacle. I kept trading spots with the other 2 cars the whole time. It was very clean, but with quite a few occasions of trading paint. In the end, I managed to do a bit better exit out of the last corner and finish 1st, but it could have easily gone the other way. At the end the rest of the field did join us (probably the rubberbanding for Boost Off), but I didn't mind it at all, it made the race feel even more alive since they also kept battling each other.
The setup for the race was:
15 minute endurance
I started at position 10 out of 20
I was in the red Ferrari 458 Italia Gr. 4
my car is fully stock, nothing is changed
the rest are 19 Gr. 4 cars
Boost Off (I am still not good enough for Weak)
Difficulty Professional
BoP on
No damage / fuel etc. since I don't want Sophy to pit
Wild session with SOPHY at Sardegna. So fast! It's like BTCC with SOPHY taking so many lines and slip ups and cut backs, overtakes, whoops moments and collisions. That track is one of the best for action. Video will be uploaded.
I find that weak is not always harder than off. On my last grid at the Nürburgring i have an even harder time getting to first place with boost off that with weak. If you have the time always test out both options.
Thanks to those who suggested setting the Boost to Weak. I ran a 30 lap event at Trial Mountain in Gr.3.
Seems to be the way with Sophy in my experience. Once you get to the front, you and P2 will be your own group a few seconds up the road from the rest of the field. I was spun out of 1st place by Sophy going onto the back straight more than once. I guess because the Boost was set to weak, I was able to catch back up again (over the three times I was spun out, I lost about 20 seconds)
I was surprised to see them driving dirty, fully sending it and spinning me out. But it meant that I had to be defensive going into braking zones, which I've never really had to do in GT.
Looking forward to running more races, and coming up with a list of endurance races to create. Could make for some decent live streams 👀
Had a fun two-lapper Spec Miata race in the dead of the night at the Ring. I'm not really used to driving in the dark so it made it even tougher for me. Some nice side by side battles, lead changes,etc. Eked out a 3 second win even if it got kinda crazy in the Dottinger Hohe on the last lap. Sophy was going 3 wide right on my tail! Nürburgring 24h__2 (4) by 2cam16, on Flickr
Turns out I was doing something wrong and my MX-5 Cup cars will actually run on Racing Hard tires, which is much closer to the real world Michelin slicks the MX-5 Cup series uses. Not sure what I did but they kept defaulting back to Comfort Soft when testing - all good now though and lap times are instantly much closer to real world, though I may have to tweak the setups a little.
Car: Mazda Roadster NR-A (ND) '22
Engine capacity : limited to 181hp
Minimum weight : raised to 2474lbs (as close as GT7 allows to the real world 2475lbs)
Minimum ride height : 102mm
Tires : Racing Hard
Other : Racing Suspension, Brakes, Gearbox.
Thanks for making this post. I thought I had set my MX-5 Cup to Racing: Hard - I checked and I had, but this made me go and check the Clio Cup which I found out uses slicks IRL, so I updated my series to use Racing: Hard.
You should see when I set the RS 500 to the real world specs of 540BHP/1185kg & 1100kg, M3 SE to 340BHP/1040kg.
It’s Project Cars 2 settings for the RS 500 and M3 SE. Only problem with the M3s are we can’t get them to 940kg. However, the only way to get it at that exact weight is with the Supra engine swap, but I dislike it’s a six-cylinder.
As for the RS 500, on its skinny tyres it doesn’t put the power down smoothly and not as stable as the M3 SE. The M3 SE is an awesome match with those specs(shown by the orange M3 SE that makes its way through the battle pack). It’s the real world tradeoff of power versus nimbleness.
You can see how close the racing is through the corners.
Sophy is really great but needs to improve. Without boost on weak it cant keep up when overtaken.
I did more then 10 one hour races on the Nürburgring 24 Layout.
-20 Gr.3 cars on RH tires
-Fuel x2
-Tires x3
-60min Endurance
-Time x24
-Slipstream Realistic
-Damage Realistic
-Boost weak
-AI on professional
Sophy pits around lap 5 with about 30-34 fuel left. At that point im around P10-13 with P1 about 8-9 seconds ahead.
It´s a no brainer to do an overcut but thats unfortunately impossible. After P1 exits the pit i have an 24-26 secound lead.
At around hohe Acht Sophy catches up. It´s just frustrating. The racing is great with sophy. It tries to overtake, defends really great.
But the rubberbanding needs to be fixed. Or at least make Sophy "faster" on boost off without the rubberbanding.
I never had such good racing with A.I. Since GT Sport im waiting to race against the A.I. at the Nordschleife. Always letting me trough. After 8 years its now possible...
Multiclass is still broken, at least in my experience, even with Sophy
Did a 30min at spa, 10 gr3 and 10gr4 cars. I run the 20th place gr4.
Rolling start, tyre x5 fuel x5
Boost off
Professional level
I've got the fastest lap in the race, finished second, and also spun once.
My gr4 is quicker out of the corners, and faster on the straight. It's just unrealistic at all.
I largely prefer at this point random cars, at least i don't know in advance what i should expect in terms of performance
Results are what matters, not what the config is called. If you want the multiclass result to be anywhere near realistic you need to use Weak. Boost being off isn’t a more realistic setting.
Question: when you say that boost whatever make AI ahead do this or the AI behind do that, do you refer to the immediatly ahead/behind or to the whole lot of cars ahead/behind ?
Question: when you say that boost whatever make AI ahead do this or the AI behind do that, do you refer to the immediatly ahead/behind or to the whole lot of cars ahead/behind ?
I'm going to close out my MX-5 Cup experiment with this last post on them, as I feel I have them in a good place now, so I'll point my previous posts to this one.
After some discussion with my race engineer (otherwise known as ChatGPT) and watching many real world IMSA MX-5 Cup videos, such as this and this, I've managed to get the cars setup in a way that's a bit more realistic and feels much more balanced to drive, for myself and for Sophy. I've also managed to get the gear shift points much closer to the real world car. Speeds, gear changes, and lap times are now in the ball park with the recent gen MX-5 Cup cars, and loosely follow their IMSA regulations for weight, horsepower, ride height and tires. (Modify each AI car setup with slight differences in ballast and power reduction, camber, toe and anti roll, for performance variety). I'm not going to pretend these are accurate but they are in the right performance zone and you can now take a full grid of these cars to Sophy tracks and have some really solid racing (and might even make a good base for an online League)
This video below shows the build and base car setup for what I've settled on. Each car will cost $177,800 to build (which is $3,556,000 for the entire grid) plus the small cost to apply Styles (which I recommend from VIKINGMIKE13 for a full grid of 2025 Whelen MX-5 Cup cars styles). Feel free to take it from here and modify anything to what you think works best. Now what to build next... Current V8 Supercars maybe?
I think they would still provide a reasonable race with the default AI on PS4, as much as any cars do with the default AI. I did a race at Daytona Road with them, which doesn't have Sophy, and the race was reasonably decent. I'll do another later, without using Sophy, and post a video so you can see the difference 👍
Thanks!! I have quite a few of the 22’s so it wouldn’t take much to fill out the whole grid. I can’t remember if I tuned the ones I have or not or put a bunch of parts on. I’ll have to check. I have not played in over a year I think. 😬 Hopefully a PS5 and soppy one day.
I am really having fun with Sophy custom races, but as I am mostly doing some races with road cars, I would love that they add tyre selection beside stock or racing hard.
Mostly driving road cars on stock compound or one better, CS, RH or max.RM and when using some older cars that would fit as opponent with power/weight they finish handiccaped because of stock tyre usually being CM (like Civic '84), I really hope that they would add that option for sophy cars in next updates.
I was still on the PS4 until recently too. You're really not missing much in GT7 on PS5 apart from Sophy, and it's really only the most recent update that made Sophy usable, by allowing it to be used in custom races. It's definitely a game changer now.
Inside the spoiler tag below are two videos (don't want to spam the page with videos), both are 15 minute races at Road Atlanta with the MX-5 Cup cars. The first video is against Regular AI (same as what you will race on PS4), the second video is racing Sophy AI. It's pretty clear how flawed the regular AI is when you compare the races, but if you find you are beating it too easily you could probably start adding weight ballast to your car until you even out with the regular AI. Once you've raced with Sophy it's really hard to want to race regular AI again, but if it's all you know then it's probably not so bad.
@cfiore99 I still love me some regular AI! Writing to insist you flip to a “user” tune sheet in the pre-race lobby to even the odds. Its exact adjustment depends on car, driver, and circuit, but generally speaking doing 90-95 on the power restrictor (from 100 in the base tune) puts you in a reliable ballpark. Oftentimes I’ll fiddle with the transmission to give me a little more zip out of corners, otherwise you can create ‘samey’ races where you can only pass on that one turn the AI is bad at as you lack the ability to keep up while in slipstream.
The reason this is important is that Reggy uses roughly 98% throttle after turn 1 - shown in replays. It’s bizarre they made the game this way, giving the player an advantage/making it an unfair fight as an undisclosed default, but if you know how to work against it you can create some great fights with non-Sophy.
I’m actually loving switching back and forth as I go through @Theufcveteran’s career mode - having two different AI drivers per car creates a lot more position shuffling across a season of races!
Nürburgring 24h__2 (4) by 2cam16, on Flickr
So fast! It's like BTCC with SOPHY taking so many lines and slip ups and cut backs, overtakes, whoops moments and collisions. That track is one of the best for action. Video will be uploaded. 
