The FIA GT Championship's European Final Was The Best Gran Turismo Event, Ever

This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:

This article was published by Jordan Greer (@Jordan) on October 28th, 2018 in the Esports category.

 

Congrats for the coverage!

 

"Racing is a human drama and I would like to achieve that in the next game.”-Kazunori Yamauchi

The madman was right....he was right all along.

 

i would image how it will be The Fia GT Champioship world final event
it will be definetly the best FIA GT event ever

 

Even from an online viewer the event was great to watch. And congrats to Lord Protector, that must be such a special birthday history event to have Kaz presenting you with a surprise cake.

Also Kaz is seemingly the only one who knows how to get down in rhythm with the music at these dance parties.

 

First of all, it is great to know your perspective, Jordan, as you´ve been following closely the world of Gran Turismo for the past 20 years. Not so many people can give the right thoughts on what Polyphony Digital is doing good or bad to guide the saga to the electronic sports world.

Yes, I also thought the stand wouldnt fill up with the finals, but I must say I wasnt that surprised when 500 spectators were watching the finales. When I got surprised for real was when my colleagues told me another bunch of hundreds of people were watching the races from outside of the stand, and specially when people started cheering our local hero, @Coque14.

As I tried to express in my latest post for SimRacer. es, there have been several reasons for what has ended up being the biggest event that has ever reunited more people in the history of Gran Turismo. First, the most obvious one should be that PD wanted to show off the new track, Montmeló, on its original country. But why not choosing Barcelona then? On the past two videogame weekend events in Madrid, both simracing and Gran Turismo had been present: on December 2017 Fernando Perpiñán (TRL_PERPI) won a Nissan Juke GT Sport in an individual GT Sport event organised by PlayStation League. There we could see around 50 people watching the race, most of them from spanish simracing teams. On. The number of spectators on both wasn´t that big, so I assume somehow PD knew our country was really interested in GT.

That drives me to think the influence of Lucas Ordóñez has been, as usual, fundamental. GT6 was presented at Ronda, Málaga, thanks to his recommendation of putting the circuit of Ascari in the game. For a reason Lucas has been the most suitable GTAcademy finalist, at least in my opinion, and that is his closeness and patience. We Spaniards are extremely lucky of having him. During the event he approached lots of GT players from Spain, giving them advices and talking to them as if they were his friends. I wouldn´t be surprised if finally PD decided to do the european final in Madrid because of his direct advice.

So yeah, I do think presence of GT on last occasions + Lucas was the main reason for going to Spain. I think somehow PD had to know for sure the Spanish fans would cheer up more than anybody in Europe. Maybe PD could have done something more to promote local drivers or the drivers who were the favorites to win the title (doing interviews to them and uploading them to social networks, for example), but what they certainly did perfect was making the MGW assistants go to their stand. I can tell around 100-150 people on the stand were simracing-related, but the other 400 + the people outside the stand I believe were watching the event by itself, because they were truly enjoying the virtual overtakes, battles and racing. The promotion of the final on Saturday was just great. There were a lot more people. The work of our commentators was also essential: they made the people that came on friday knew Coque was going to be in the final the following day.

It was also important the fact that people watched a wide variety of cars. We can argue if PD has done a good job or not on balancing the cars, but for sure people loved that luck factor (drivers choosing randomly the cars on the two finals, except the last one which was monotype). If we only look up fr the results, this way of structuring the live finals works (many competitive players were against going with a different car).

Spain is a country with a big interest in automotion and racing, and also in the virtual motorsport world: you could see Joaquín Verdegay giving the trophy to second place in the podium, Giorgio Mangano. Joaquín is the vice president of the Spanish Automotive Federation (RFEdA). This clearly showed how RFEdA was considering and looking closely a virtual racing simulator!. As I said before, im 100% sure PD knew somehow spanish fans would scream and applaud their local players, which is the real important thing as Jordan said. And as I told to all my buddies on the final: this is just the beggining. PD has the resources to make the biggest competitive simulator. Still a few things have to improve. But just imagine: don´t you think it was Kazunori´s first time feeling lots of emotions from a crowd cheering, in the end, for his videogame?

 

Can’t wait for Vegas!
Gonna be so sick seeing Z28 there.

 

Thanks @Jordan for this write-up, good to get your thoughts on it, and great work on the overall coverage.

I hope at some point the hosts interview you on the main broadcast, as you've been supporting GT for years and years, and GT Planet is the main fan site, forum and whatnot.

Can't wait for Vegas!

 

The best is yet to come and I will have to practice for better jumps on the stage

On a more serious side, meeting everyone there including my friend @khkenni was a special feeling, and maybe for the first time, I'm proud to really talk about those competitions to everyone I know even if they don't understand much!

And all of this wouldn't have been possible without all the medias involved, all the staff who worked hard to create this, and all the drivers! One of the best community, that's for sure.

 

One of the best days in my life and definitely the most emotional and surprising birthday ever!
I’ll never forget this!

And I’m really glad I could meet all the wonderful people including @Jordan and @Famine you guys were great!

Btw: Kaz did tell me that this really was what he meant by the “human drama” thing and boy what a drama it was

 

...Well, these broadcasts would be better, perfect even, if Daiki Kasho was there for a live concert. The only time he did that was in the GT Asian Championship six years ago.

Somebody please tell Kaz that, and then I'll be in heaven.

 

Great to hear how well this event went. Sounds like a lot of people put in a lot of effort into making a really special day.

 

Hi guys.

I was a competitor of all 3 events this year, but Madrid was unbelievable!!!
If I think back to this weekend then I can only take my hat off !!! Starting with everything around, perfect !!! Ceased from the people who were there .... Unbelievable !!! Hard races against each other and afterwards until 5 in the morning make Madrid unsafe. It was so much fun and it's nice to see that I'm not the only one disturbed! Many thanks to RC_Atho and RC_Snake! Madness how much fun you have despite our language problems ... Si olaola xD

*Not a part of World Finals but i was last at party on Saturday!

 

Great article!

 

Z28 made it! I'm so happy for him!

 

I so forgot to ask Lenny to play Soul on Display at the party

 

Thanks man that was good fun as always ! I'll missing you for the world final

Finally from what i've seen on other games it's probably the best simracing e-sport event ever made for sure

 

...Oh? He played some of Daiki's songs there?

Hm, would've been nice if the broadcasts focused on him as well. 'Cause, you know, to some people like me, GT is not just about the racing, but the music as well.