An unexpected and undocumented throwback feature has been discovered in the Gran Turismo 7 Power Pack DLC, with players reporting that it’s actually possible to suspend and resume a race even if your PlayStation 5 powers off.
The Gran Turismo 7 Power Pack DLC, the first paid DLC for the game in the three and a half years it’s been on sale, has only been out for a few days but already the first players are starting to come towards the end of the various paths through the pack for the first time.
This $29.99 add-on brings 50 races against a new version of the advanced, machine-learning trained Gran Turismo Sophy AI, dubbed “Sophy 3.0”, with players able to select from three pre-tuned cars each race to provide an effective difficulty scale.
However, right from the moment it was announced there was some consternation about some of the contents: the touted 24-hour endurance race(s). Specifically the issue centered on how these would be managed; whether it would be a solo chunk of time like in Gran Turismo 4 (taking advantage of the PS5’s own suspend/resume feature), or more like Gran Turismo 5 with a B-Spec variant of Sophy, a dedicated mid-race save feature, or both.
As it turns out, the answer is a bit of a mix, with the solution for the Gran Turismo 7 Power Pack DLC’s four multi-hour endurance races being a little different from either — and frustratingly without any actual guidance offered to players. It’s also an entirely passive function, so you cannot perform it manually.
The first thing you’ll need to know is that this feature appears to only apply to the Power Pack and only to the four timed endurance races: Gr.C Memories Endurance, Gran Turismo 500 Endurance, GT ONE Endurance, and Nurburgring Endurance Gr.3. We’ve tried it in other races and in timed races in the regular game and no dice.
Additionally these races are hidden from view until you reach the end of their relevant Power Pack paths. The GT500 event, running around Suzuka for six hours, comes when you complete all of the races in the orange, Japan-Asia path. For the GT1 race, taking in the Spa 24h course for eight hours, you’ll have to complete every other race in the green, Europe path. That leaves two 24-hour races, with Gr.C Memories at Le Mans after the yellow, Historic path, and the pink Nurburgring path ending up at the N24 track.
From there you just need to take part in the race until you run out of willpower — it’s unclear if there is a minimum number of laps/time, but we’ve seen it as low as single-digits — but take great care how you proceed from that point onwards. If you click on the “Retire” button, that’s your race done; what you need to do is forcibly shut the game down from the PlayStation Home menu, or turn your console off entirely.
Next time you boot up the game, head into the DLC (via the ship moored in the bottom-left corner of the World Map) and select the race, you’ll be presented with a “Resume” screen that allows you to jump back into the race — but it’s as if a red flag has been thrown.
That means you’ll restart at the beginning of your last completed lap, with gaps between cars on the lead lap now eliminated. You’ll also have fresh tires, but your fuel load will be as it was before you terminated the game — so try to avoid using the feature until a couple of laps after you’ve pitted.
It’s also worth noting that you don’t actually need to head directly back to your race. You can go and do anything else the game offers, including other Power Pack races and any of the three other endurance races, and return to it at any time. We don’t yet know if you can have multiple suspended endurances, but it’d be pretty wacky if you could.
As the feature is otherwise not referenced in-game, we’d like to shoot some thanks to the many GTPlanet members who’ve been testing this out in our Power Pack thread. Let us know your thoughts in the thread!
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