Gran Turismo's Sydney Event Set a New Standard for Racing Esports

Honestly as far as world tour events go, I have to say that this one wasn’t especially interesting. I didn’t find the racing to be any more exciting than examples from other events, and the lack of new stuff to show off meant there was less payoff for casual viewers. There were no new tracks or layouts to throw a curveball at the participants either.
 
I wonder how all this is going to move forward w/ this COVID-19 outbreak the world is currently contending with...
 
Miyazono 3 stop strategy (Never done before) in New York would have got him a podium and possibly the World Tour, he was deny by Cody Illegal block at Spa. He was also later on held by Cody from Podium/World Tour on his home soil Japan. Than Sydney World Tour happen and his Hero Journey come to an perfect end. b^_^)b

And lets not forget the heart braking tragedy of Sydney World Tour, P. Blazsan costly mistake at the COD. He drove an amazing race, his decision to work with Miyazono in chasing down Cody made it possible for Miyazono win the World Tour. And without that mistake the end of the Grand Final would have been more epic with 3 vDrivers duke it out the finish.
 
Sydney was my favourite event to date, not just because of the racing, but thanks to being much closer to home I could actually watch it live instead of days after!

Surely there's a World Tour event coming to New Zealand soon....? :P
 
Stop giving Gran Turismo free passes just because you're a fan of the franchise. This event was awful, the stewards have no clue what they're doing, and the production team told their commentators to shut up when they tried to criticise said stewards. This is a big deal breaker for the tour, you have to run a fair and balanced competition and they utterly failed to do that on both days.

GTP cannot continue to live in a bubble and pretend everything is fine with the tour, because it isn't. If this is the 'new standard', Gran Turismo E-Sports is doomed.
 
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Stop giving Gran Turismo free passes just because you're a fan of the franchise. This event was awful, the stewards have no clue what they're doing, and the production team told their commentators to shut up when they tried to criticise said stewards. This is a big deal breaker for the tour, you have to run a fair and balanced competition and they utterly failed to do that on both days.

GTP cannot continue to live in a bubble and pretend everything is fine with the tour, because it isn't. If this is the 'new standard', Gran Turismo E-Sports is doomed.
Are you sure you watched the same Sydney event that we did?
 
Yep. It was amazing. Can’t wait for the next event in Germany. I might attend it.
 
Stop giving Gran Turismo free passes just because you're a fan of the franchise. This event was awful, the stewards have no clue what they're doing, and the production team told their commentators to shut up when they tried to criticise said stewards. This is a big deal breaker for the tour, you have to run a fair and balanced competition and they utterly failed to do that on both days.

GTP cannot continue to live in a bubble and pretend everything is fine with the tour, because it isn't. If this is the 'new standard', Gran Turismo E-Sports is doomed.
....Um, where exactly did you hear that they tried to shut them up? o_o

On-topic, yeah, I agree. These events seem to go better with a live audience. But you know what would be a lot better at one of these events at least?

*points to what was after the GT Asian Championship back in 2012*

=P
 
GTP cannot continue to live in a bubble and pretend everything is fine with the tour, because it isn't. If this is the 'new standard', Gran Turismo E-Sports is doomed.
Likewise, you can't keep parroting the narrative that the World Tour is some kind of unmitigated disaster, because it's not.

To summarize this article, I think Sydney was the best event yet because:
  • The drivers finally have enough history behind them that we can build larger narratives around them.
  • Those narratives make the racing itself more exciting and dramatic. (If this final race had happened back in 2018 it still would have been entertaining, but the history that now exists between Latkovski and Miyazono — within the context of an Australian event — adds a lot of seasoning to an already juicy steak.)
  • A lively, energetic crowd of this size was something special and is unparalleled in the racing esports niche.
All of those ingredients came together in Sydney better than any other World Tour event, which made it exceptional. I know you've been extremely critical of the stewards and the commentators since the series began and you are welcome to have those opinions, but to call the event "awful" and reject the evolution that it has undergone over the last 3 years feels disingenuous and unreasonably cynical.
 
Stop giving Gran Turismo free passes just because you're a fan of the franchise. This event was awful, the stewards have no clue what they're doing, and the production team told their commentators to shut up when they tried to criticise said stewards. This is a big deal breaker for the tour, you have to run a fair and balanced competition and they utterly failed to do that on both days.

GTP cannot continue to live in a bubble and pretend everything is fine with the tour, because it isn't. If this is the 'new standard', Gran Turismo E-Sports is doomed.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Oh Please! I know plenty of people that went and competed, everyone said it was amazing. All you seem to do is find negatives in everything. Name me a sport where the umpires get it right all the time? I’ll wait. Instead of being pure salt, how about enjoying the fact the GT Esports is becoming mainstream and the drivers are getting gigs in real motorsport, which in turn gives everyone hope to go real racing.
 
Likewise, you can't keep parroting the narrative that the World Tour is some kind of unmitigated disaster, because it's not.

To summarize this article, I think Sydney was the best event yet because:
  • The drivers finally have enough history behind them that we can build larger narratives around them.
  • Those narratives make the racing itself more exciting and dramatic. (If this final race had happened back in 2018 it still would have been entertaining, but the history that now exists between Latkovski and Miyazono — within the context of an Australian event — adds a lot of seasoning to an already juicy steak.)
  • A lively, energetic crowd of this size was something special and is unparalleled in the racing esports niche.
All of those ingredients came together in Sydney better than any other World Tour event, which made it exceptional. I know you've been extremely critical of the stewards and the commentators since the series began and you are welcome to have those opinions, but to call the event "awful" and reject the evolution that it has undergone over the last 3 years feels disingenuous and unreasonably cynical.

As a newer GTS player and somewhat more casual fan of the World Tour Events, it would be nice to include the racer's gamer tags in the articles and maybe a little more of their history for those of us that don't know. The bits of the event that I did watch, I kept on wanting to put names and faces to the online gamer tags because that's what I know. I mean, I could identity @Tidgney pretty easily but that's only because I watch his YouTube channel.
 
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I was fortunate enough to attend on both days and really enjoyed it.

Setup
It is a very impressive setup and the audio and video quality get top marks. Tom, Jimmy and Julia gel really well and make the show bubble along nicely, even during lulls in the action. The Australian pre-show announcer is a regular at sporting events and on radio, and was clearly much more comfortable on the Sunday as he understood the setting and crowd a little better.

Crowd
The crowd was pretty good, I am going to guess most were part of the sim racing scene in Australia, if not Gran Turismo players themselves. As a side note a lot of the top split regulars from Australia were there as spectators - it was great to put screen names to faces after 2.5 years of GT Sport!

The Saturday was officially a sell-out, but only about 75% of the seats were filled. Not sure if a small charge to enter (i.e. $5 or $10) would have been better than reserving a spot for free, that you can bail on at any time (which evidently happened) - food for thought.

Maybe half the seats on Sunday were filled. I felt it was a shame for the people who only attended on Saturday, because the racing was 100% better for Nations (more on this below) this time around.

Perhaps moving forward, these events need to be marketed a little better to people outside of the sim-racing/GT niche. But I am sure Sony and PD will have a strategy for this.

Manufacturers
For Manufacturers it seemed fairly obvious that BMW were going to win Race 1 when they were able to keep up with the leaders on Softs, while on Medium tyres. Race 2 they bolted on Softs from pole and that was all she wrote. All their drivers drove very well to pull it off and Nico was the easy choice for DOTD.

Still not sure why Toyota was penalised, but that is just my opinion.

Nations
All races were high quality and have been covered in great detail already. Takuma is a worthy winner, as would Cody have been - he has been much more solid and consistently fast since early last year and his time will surely come.

As we all know these World Tours are stacked with talent. I would point out that a lot of drivers do well in the regular season and qualify for world tours, but haven't really been in contention. To me this is the edge that Igor, Mikail, Takuma and Cody have on the rest of the field - they keep qualifying and are serious contenders nearly every single time.

Hopefully the event will return here next year.
 
Just to end the train of roasting that one dude in this thread, I'd just like to say once again I'm so glad I actually went out to watch the Nations Cup portion of the Sydney WT in person. Crowd had easily the highest level of hype out of all the WTs thus far, plus the final lap battle between Latkovski and Miyazono is the closest we're ever gonna get to the Gran Turismo equivalent of EVO Moment 37 or the "Wombo Combo".

Really hoping Sydney/Australia becomes a mainstay for future World Tours and I'm definitely looking forward to watching Nurburgring and other future events!
 
The Australian pre-show announcer is a regular at sporting events and on radio, and was clearly much more comfortable on the Sunday as he understood the setting and crowd a little better.
Who was the pre-show announcer?
 
I know a guy that would be a great pre-show announcer
The one with the smooth dulcet tones? ;)
Honestly it took me a little while to realise who you are, dear oh dear...
Should've been a special Australian commentary booth at Luna Park for you and the good doc

BTW welcome to GTP!
 
The one with the smooth dulcet tones? ;)
Honestly it took me a little while to realise who you are, dear oh dear...
Should've been a special Australian commentary booth at Luna Park for you and the good doc

BTW welcome to GTP!
HAHAHAHAHA Thanks mate
 
Are you sure you watched the same Sydney event that we did?
Depends on whether or not you recall;

- Toyota being framed for a crime they did not commit.
- Lexus making a very questionable lunge without punishment. The production team tried to sweep it under the rug by not showing a replay, because they knew it was bad.
- Suswillo only getting a slap on the wrist for costing another driver any chance he had at a finals berth.
- Rubilar then getting the death penalty on a technicality. Rules are rules, but in light of the previous incident it's a bad look.

Leading to me switching the stream off in disgust before the nations final, hence why I'm refusing to factor that race into my overall assessment of the event. Gran Turismo is unbelievably lucky that the close finish happened, as it has allowed them to completely change the narrative of what should've gone down as one of the lowest points on the tour yet.

Then why did GT Planet stop? The problem is as bad as it's ever been and you're now giving the tour a free pass for stuff you used to rally against. Next time, there might not be a close finish or an epic comeback (see nations world final 2018 and it's terrible format) that overshadows all of the bad that came before it.

Name me a sport where the umpires get it right all the time?
As suspect as umpiring often is, you cannot compare the world tour to it because the officiating has been bad even by those standards. Umpires in most sports only have a split second to make their decision. Stewards on the tour can potentially take several minutes and view every angle to make sure they're making the right decision. We have to hold the stewards to a much higher standard because they get all of the advantages that regular umpires simply don't have.
 
We haven't. You're seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see, in order to push your own agenda.
That's a pants-on-fire tier lie. I reread both of the race reports and this lovely article and found no mention of the poor stewarding throughout this event. In fact Jordan even goes as far as to say that people celebrated Lexus making the podium without mentioning the devious means they used to get there. Don't try to tell me that 2 plus 2 equals 5, because I know what I saw and read.
 
Depends on whether or not you recall;

- Toyota being framed for a crime they did not commit.
- Lexus making a very questionable lunge without punishment. The production team tried to sweep it under the rug by not showing a replay, because they knew it was bad.
- Suswillo only getting a slap on the wrist for costing another driver any chance he had at a finals berth.
- Rubilar then getting the death penalty on a technicality. Rules are rules, but in light of the previous incident it's a bad look.

Leading to me switching the stream off in disgust before the nations final, hence why I'm refusing to factor that race into my overall assessment of the event. Gran Turismo is unbelievably lucky that the close finish happened, as it has allowed them to completely change the narrative of what should've gone down as one of the lowest points on the tour yet.


Then why did GT Planet stop? The problem is as bad as it's ever been and you're now giving the tour a free pass for stuff you used to rally against. Next time, there might not be a close finish or an epic comeback (see nations world final 2018 and it's terrible format) that overshadows all of the bad that came before it.


As suspect as umpiring often is, you cannot compare the world tour to it because the officiating has been bad even by those standards. Umpires in most sports only have a split second to make their decision. Stewards on the tour can potentially take several minutes and view every angle to make sure they're making the right decision. We have to hold the stewards to a much higher standard because they get all of the advantages that regular umpires simply don't have.
Have a look at Virgin Australia Supercars. Those stewards still sometimes get it wrong. Even WITH camera footage. They've even waited after races and got it wrong in the fans eyes. They even called a Championship defining moment right at the finish line, which stripped the potential trophy from the series leader. So, stewards don't always get it right.
 
I know what I saw and read.
Which is, as I said, only what you want to see and read (and already punctured in this thread, resulting in a face-saving switch of argument).
That's a pants-on-fire tier lie.
You've literally just been caught doing it.

You've been pushing this agenda non-stop. You're more than welcome to hold whatever ridiculous views you want on GT Sport, Polyphony Digital, the World Tour or whatever, but calling our integrity into question - especially after having just been caught out making stuff up - crosses the line.
 
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Thank god that's over.

Back on topic, I do agree with a previous point of view that the racing at Sydney wasn't particularly spectacular until the last race, which gave us what will probably be a defining moment in GTSport World Tour history for some time to come. Watching Miyazono slowly closing in on Latkovski as the laps ticked by and set up that finish was astonishing to watch.

In terms of production values the World Tours have been going from strength to strength and what we have now makes for very entertaining viewing from start to finish. The only negative in my eyes is the competition format that I don't think has been properly refined yet. The double points for the final race rule never sits well with me, and when there's only 2 races is a bit of a mockery of the first race (specific to Manufacturers).

The entire rule-set for the 2020 season doesn't feel right, but that's probably a discussion for another thread. The World Tour production feels spot on 👍
 
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