Gran Turismo 7 vs iRacing

[Haitauer]

How many here also play iRacing? What is your take on differences and similarities of the online racing?

I find the points system in iRacing extremely frustrating. Hours of steady work can be destroyed by a dirty driver who ruins your race. Everything is everybodys fault and the damage you take to your iRating if you finnish at the bottom due to accident is nuts.

The fact iRacing has purely "no-fault" penalty system is a joke in 2026. They dont even try to penalise bad drivers as they would fail miserably. Makes me sometimes miss the GT7 penalty systen even though its far from perfect.

Just lost almost 200 points in two races - both times in mid pack 10th or so some idot destroyed the back corner of my car trying to dive bomb. Results in tow to pits and 5+ minutes of repairs and you find yourself a lap down. 99% of the time the other guy keeps happily running, as front bumber is a lot more sturdy than a rear wheel.

 

[Nebuc72]

Quality of racing is much better in iR, as you'd expect with a strong paywall and a more serious attitude towards racing, GT7 is very casual friendly and as such has a big part of that audience.

The SR and DR systems are the same across both games really, iRating is calculated in a similar manner to DR, I don't care about losing either. It is just used to matchmake me. The number is meaningless. Sometimes racing doesn't go your way. That's just racing. I join another race.

SR, whilst GT7 has a penalty system that iR doesn't, still will go down for contact that isn't your fault. Bump drafting is a good example, races at Le Mans or the ovals etc. see people lose a huge amount of SR (and often DR through resets) because the car behind was pushing them along and contacting them for minutes at a time.
In that sense, iR is also the same.

The only thing I don't like in iR is how SR gates content, and so you can lose access to what you have paid for by having your SR drop.
I do find it pretty lenient though, as it reaches the bottom of a SR bracket it becomes a lot harder to lose it and easier to gain it. I have never dropped a rank ultimately, a couple races where I play it safe climbs it back up to where it needs to be.

A lot of people will do a single endurance event every season because a clean race there will catapult you back up to max SR for your rank. You can use your safety rating as a bit of a currency in that regard, pushing track limits etc. throughout the season knowing you'll earn it all back eventually anyway.