Live Stream: FIA Gran Turismo Championships New York World Tour

Read again till the end, because I'm not against PD sponsoring Igor IRL. I'm against PD doing that while at the same time allowing him to participate in the esports competition. I think I was pretty clear.

I don't think the stakes right now in these world tours are high enough to start speculating about bias related to PD and Igor. The only thing the winner earn is a watch, so what? How exactly does Igor winning all the time can benefit PD? More likely they will start to worry if no one can beat him, as they seem to be much more interested in building a brand of esports event than investing in one specific driver's career. Personally, I think it's awesome that they're helping someone in a difficult financial situation to follow his dream in real life. That is excellent for their brand.
 
And it's not like PD is providing Igor a faster car than the others competitors. IMO PD and us should be proud that one of us is a talented real life racer.

I was at the event earlier and I heard some people behind me saying that Fraga is cheating/has the faster car.
I don't think some people there know that he was a real life racer.
 
Well, the World Tours doesn't even award money prizes (at least that I'm aware of). And someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the stewards come from FIA, not from PD.

I don't think the stakes right now in these world tours are high enough to start speculating about bias related to PD and Igor. The only thing the winner earn is a watch, so what? How exactly does Igor winning all the time can benefit PD? More likely they will start to worry if no one can beat him, as they seem to be much more interested in building a brand of esports event than investing in one specific driver's career. Personally, I think it's awesome that they're helping someone in a difficult financial situation to follow his dream in real life. That is excellent for their brand.

So, 1) can you both explain to me what would be the harm in leaving the only driver who gets real money outside the esports competion (Igor) out of it? 2) If the competitors don't get anything other than a watch or a piece of plastic, I suppose Igor wouldn't be losing much? Or would he?


I also disagree about speculating about bias. From the moment there's potential for conflict of interests, you have reasons to speculate. Have you seen the ridiculous way the penalty was handled? Hizal and Igor were not informed the incident was under investigation, then the penalty comes out of nowhere and is coincidently just "severe" enough to be pointless.
 
Pretty much me after reading through all this drama:

5Y9.gif


What an utter joke of a Grand Final
 
I'd say a 1/3rd of the crowd had Gran Turismo caps on lol. It's all good, I was looking for some other people and never found them. Ran into some chill people and hung out with them for a bit.
 
So, 1) can you both explain to me what would be the harm in leaving the only driver who gets real money outside the esports competion (Igor) out of it? 2) If the competitors don't get anything other than a watch or a piece of plastic, I suppose Igor wouldn't be losing much? Or would he?
Well, let's not forget GT Sport is a game, so the harm would be someone not being able to take part in a competition from a game he/she enjoys. Games are meant to be fun, after all.

And if we use your logic, Toyota should be banned from Manufacturers Cup, since Toyota has an official partnership with PD.
 
Have you seen the ridiculous way the penalty was handled? Hizal and Igor were not informed the incident was under investigation, then the penalty comes out of nowhere and is coincidently just "severe" enough to be pointless.

I agree that stewards are far of being the best on the live events, but severity of a penalty can ve easily addressed without banning competitors:

Make public the amount of Time by severity, if You ser usually the times are:

-2 seconds slow severity
-5 seconds mid severity
-10 seconds high severity

They just need to put that on paper, orherwise, giving random times cause More speculation, even if ir would be on favor of Hizal here
 
I'm not gonna go too deep into this debate as it's pretty heated, but I do feel people really are reaching too far, assuming there is some big conspiracy going on with PD and Fraga, with PD rigging this in one way or another. It's kinda funny actually.

Was this the perfect ending? No. Is there a conspiracy going on? No.
 
So many hot takes.

For those who think this is somehow exclusive to PD/GT Sport and its a bad look, how much F1 have you watched? Controversial steward decisions, driver drama and feuds, entire championships with a whole lot of money behind them depending on such decisions.... it's all there and for a lot of it the drama attracts attention.

Everyone loves a good rivalry etc

Now the actual race.

Hizal lost because of his own attitude. Everyone can see it, the audience, the commentators, the host....he gets too emotional and it results in awkward behaviour. That post interview was straight cringe. If you have criticisms of stewardship say it in a clear, professional manner that doesn't make you come across as emotionally driven and vindictive.

Also wanna call out Hizal for the fuel comment. Someone needs to fact check that. He immediately lost several seconds after being upset Igor went by him and then the lost over the next 3 laps was only like 2 secs. Calling straight ********.

If he really was somehow fuel saving then he deserved to come in second place as Igor would have passed him eventually.

The move Igor did was clearly wrong (lifting off to brake opponents) and he has been rightly penalised for it. Had Hizal simply kept it together he would have won.

The lessons are clear:
- don't lift off to brake others
- don't purposely give up to make a statement

Only sad thing was seeing Miyazono not getting the podium.
 
Well, let's not forget GT Sport is a game, so the harm would be someone not being able to take part in a competition from a game he/she enjoys. Games are meant to be fun, after all.

And if we use your logic, Toyota should be banned from Manufacturers Cup, since Toyota has an official partnership with PD.

GT Sport is a game. The FIA live events are an esports competition. Quite different. I don't think Igor shouldn't play the game.

Well, yeah, I too agree Toyota shouldn't be OP. But that's a different question. And, in the end, the cars don't drive themselves. Toyota finished 10th out of 12th btw.

@mastretta_mx I don't think Igor should be banned because of his driving or number of wins . I'd say the same for any other driver. It's related to him being the only one sponsored (and getting money) by the entity who organizes the competition. It's a matter of principle, not a consequence of what happened today. What happened today just made it clearer to me why I don't think Igor (or any other driver who's sponsored by PD) should be a competitor. He could be involved in other ways while keeping his sponsorship IRL, where I think it should be.

This is not the first time this issue is discussed and I'm not the first person talking about it.
 
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So, 1) can you both explain to me what would be the harm in leaving the only driver who gets real money outside the esports competion (Igor) out of it? 2) If the competitors don't get anything other than a watch or a piece of plastic, I suppose Igor wouldn't be losing much? Or would he?


I also disagree about speculating about bias. From the moment there's potential for conflict of interests, you have reasons to speculate. Have you seen the ridiculous way the penalty was handled? Hizal and Igor were not informed the incident was under investigation, then the penalty comes out of nowhere and is coincidently just "severe" enough to be pointless.

Well, Igor pays to race and doesn't make any money yet. He participate in the events because the exposure can help him in his career and probably because he's always been a GT player. The synergy between his career and PD's interest in esports is obvious. Would be weird if they ignored the opportunity because of a contest that, for now, seems more like work in progress and a way to build a community than something really serious.

About the penalty, 5 seconds was a bit too harsh considering that actual contact in race usually results in a warning or a 1 sec penalty. Cody's crazy dirty move was 10 secs, so what did you expect? 30 second penalty, eternal ban for Igor? Vettel's move at the Canadian GP was more dangerous, imo, and the 5 sec penalty he received was already controversial.
 
GT Sport is a game. The FIA live events are an esports competition. Quite different. I don't think Igor shouldn't play the game.

Well, yeah, I too agree Toyota shouldn't be OP. But that's a different question. And, in the end, the cars don't drive themselves. Toyota finished 10th out of 12th btw.
An e-sport competition that doesn't award money or big prizes. Winners only get a watch and prestige. Basically a glorified online race. Had Hizal win today as Nico won the 1st tour, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have this conversation. Everyone uses the same car on finals, so PD sponsoring Igor doesn't make him the favorite to win or the event biased IMO.
 
Well, Igor pays to race and doesn't make any money yet. He participate in the events because the exposure can help him in his career and probably because he's always been a GT player. The synergy between his career and PD's interest in esports is obvious. Would be weird if they ignored the opportunity because of a contest that, for now, seems more like work in progress and a way to build a community than something really serious.

About the penalty, 5 seconds was a bit too harsh considering that actual contact in race usually results in a warning or a 1 sec penalty. Cody's crazy dirty move was 10 secs, so what did you expect? 30 second penalty, eternal ban for Igor? Vettel's move at the Canadian GP was more dangerous, imo, and the 5 sec penalty he received was already controversial.

Igor's private life and IRL sponsors wouldn't be an issue if one of those sponsors wasn't the organizer (and developer) of the game used for the FIA esports competition.

I expected the drivers involved being informed about the investigation and the penalty being awarded during the race. Hizal would have known the stewards were not ignoring the dirty move and keep pushing. How hard is that to understand? The organization did this mistake already last time. They should improve.

@Racer93
This has been brought up before today. It's the principle of the thing, not who's involved or what they do during the competition. Today's situation (how the incident and penalty were handled) definitely raises some eyebrows.
 
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What are your thoughts on the whole controversy going on between Hizal and "PD's Golden Boy"?

I don't like to have strong opinions on topics like these as I think both Mik and Igor are fantastic people and I love them, but personally I feel Igor did some pretty disappointing stuff there.

It's hard to blame him when you understand it's likely the difference between winning and losing, but I wish it didn't have to end up like that. The Nations finals always have the worst kinds of drama.

Idk, I feel like both Mik and Miyazono had better runs overall and it's sad to me that they didn't get rewarded for it. That's just my two cents but I'm the bad player.
 
I suppose the nature of racing means that there will always be controversial moments, be it real track racing or an eSport race. I understand Hizal's frustration, but he has to be more mentally strong in these moments.

It has to be said that the quality/consistency shown by the stewards is certainly questionable, as now another World Tour event ends in controversy. Personally, I don't think moments like these will help to build and grow GT Sport, but that's just my opinion.

I have to say, while that repechage race was ridiculously hilarious and entertaining, a race like that has no place in a World Tour event :lol:
 
Igor's private life and IRL sponsors wouldn't be an issue if one of those sponsors wasn't the organizer (and developer) of the game used for the FIA esports competition.

I expected the drivers involved being informed about the investigation and the penalty being awarded during the race. Hizal would have known the stewards were not ignoring the dirty move and keep pushing. How hard is that to understand? The organization did this mistake already last time. They should improve.

The calculated lifting - meaning he calculated the risk of a crash and a penalty - was very unusual. Very difficult to see and judge. They had to watch the replay many times after the race and they only did it because it was a battle for P1. Had it happened elsewhere no one would have noticed. In the post race interview Hizal admitted he was low on fuel so he didn't actually give up and probably wouldn't win anyway.

Of course it was a controversial move. I'd give it a 1 sec or 2 sec penalty myself.

Seems to me that people are more upset about this because of the rivalry between regions. Not very rational to demand more than a 5 sec penalty for that, imo.
 
This is a copy-paste of a comment I made on YouTube, happy to debate but not hurl hand grenades around:

Can’t believe Fraga is even being questioned here. Who has ever got a penalty in real motorsport for half-lifting?

I believe Hamilton defended from Vettel after the safety car restart in the 2017 Belgian GP (successfully and without question) in exactly the same way.

EDIT: Julia needs to go...
 
A positive spin,

4 from Asia region in top 10. 2 From Japan in the top 5.

2 from South America in the top 10.

3 from Europe in the top 10. 2 from Europe in the top 3.

Brooks did really well. A top 10 for North America.

As Jeremy Clarkson would say,.. "In the World". :D
 
I believe Hamilton defended from Vettel after the safety car restart in the 2017 Belgian GP (successfully and without question) in exactly the same way.

Hamilton wasn't half throttle all the way up Eau Rouge though, and Vettel was able to drive as normal behind but had to pull out the tow on the straight earlier and back then the Ferrari was less powerful and higher drag than the Merc.
 
The calculated lifting - meaning he calculated the risk of a crash and a penalty - was very unusual. Very difficult to see and judge. They had to watch the replay many times after the race and they only did it because it was a battle for P1. Had it happened elsewhere no one would have noticed. In the post race interview Hizal admitted he was low on fuel so he didn't actually give up and probably wouldn't win anyway.

Of course it was a controversial move. I'd give it a 1 sec or 2 sec penalty myself.

Seems to me that people are more upset about this because of the rivalry between regions. Not very rational to demand more than a 5 sec penalty for that, imo.

It was obvious what happened and they didn't need much to take care of it in timd. They have access to onboard footage. You only need to watch it once or twice. It was that obvious.

Regarding the penalty, I'm not bothered by the 5 seconds as much as how it was handled. No one knew it was being investigated until after the race (4 laps after the incident). During those 4 laps, everyone, including Hizal, thought the dirty move had been given a pass.

If something like that obvious happens, they need to inform the drivers the incident is being investigated shortly after, even if nothing comes out of it. But at least the driver who's pushed around or illegally blocked knows he can keep fighting because the incident is being looked at.
 
This is a copy-paste of a comment I made on YouTube, happy to debate but not hurl hand grenades around:

Can’t believe Fraga is even being questioned here. Who has ever got a penalty in real motorsport for half-lifting?

I believe Hamilton defended from Vettel after the safety car restart in the 2017 Belgian GP (successfully and without question) in exactly the same way.

EDIT: Julia needs to go...
What's wrong with Julia now?
 
Of course it was a controversial move. I'd give it a 1 sec or 2 sec penalty myself.

Seems to me that people are more upset about this because of the rivalry between regions. Not very rational to demand more than a 5 sec penalty for that, imo.
Now that it has been made clear it's not permitted, I'd DQ anyone who does it in a future world tour race, no matter which country they are from.
 
It was obvious what happened and they didn't need much to take care of it in timd. They have access to onboard footage. You only need to watch it once or twice. It was that obvious.

Regarding the penalty, I'm not bothered by the 5 seconds as much as how it was handled. No one knew it was being investigated until after the race (4 laps after the incident). During those 4 laps, everyone, including Hizal, thought the dirty move had been given a pass.

If something like that obvious happens, they need to inform the drivers the incident is being investigated shortly after, even if nothing comes out of it. But at least the driver who's pushed around or illegally blocked knows he can keep fighting because the incident is being looked at.
Do they actually announce to drivers when an incident is being investigated? Seems more like something for the viewers.

What's wrong with Julia now?

WTF, she's great.
 

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