One Toyota leaves and another one (sort of) arrives as the Gran Turismo 7 Online Time Trial challenges rotate as usual every Thursday morning.
Unlike the last vehicle, a fictional, homologation special-esque vehicle from the Polyphony pen, this week’s time trial subject is a real vehicle from Toyota’s ever-expanding brand portfolio, and one meant more for cruising than for track work.
Indeed the Lexus LC500 — which we have to concede is one of the best-looking production cars around — is particularly notable for one specific detail: it’s one of extremely few cars to ever appear in the GT series with a gearbox sporting ten forward ratios.
As they’re basically interstellar overdrives, you won’t be troubling most of the upper half of that ‘box though as you try to get the fastest laptime you can around Watkins Glen’s Long Course in the Lexus. That’ll mean taming the relatively floaty handling of this two-ton coupe on Sports Hard tires, and abusing the curbs especially through the bus stop chicane.
The early time flurry has seen the top drivers begin to set up camp in the lower reaches of the 2:01s, although the best time overall is currently three-tenths quicker than the next-best but we don’t expect that to last. We’d be guessing at mid-2:00s by close of play, but there’s always going to be a road car specialist who’ll come in and lay down an absurd time; could a 1:59.x be on the cards? Perhaps.
Given the dynamic nature of the target times, we’d say to expect you’ll need a 2:03.6 to be relatively safe in gold, but we’ll reassess next week once there’s a few more times on the board.
We still have a week left on the New Year’s Day challenge, comprising a hot lap of the Dragon Trail Seaside — Chicane of Death and all — in the wild Pagani Zonda R track special.
There’s not been a lot of movement on the top times in this one over the last week, but the overall record has fallen a couple of tenths and dragged the gold time down with it. At present the world’s best time is a 1:28.594, placing the gold target at a 1:31.251 for now. The severe leaderboard clustering suggests there’s not much more, if any, time left here so you should figure on any 1:31.1 being a safe and secure gold.
In order to access the Online Time Trials, you’ll need to unlock Sport Mode, by completing Menu Book 9 (“Championship: Tokyo Highway Parade”) in the GT Cafe single player hub. As it’s just you against the clock and not a direct, head-to-head multiplayer event, PlayStation Plus is not required.
You’ll usually need to be within 3% of the fastest time globally once the event finishes in order to secure “gold” status and a 2m credit bonus prize. There’s smaller prizes of one million for being within 5%, and 250,000cr for bronze at 10% off.
The events update every Thursday, with each individual challenge usually remaining available for two weeks and the oldest of the two events being replaced each week. You can look forward to the next new Time Trial arriving at 0700 UTC on Thursday January 15.
Gran Turismo 7 Lap Time Challenge January 8 – Watkins Glen
- Track: Watkins Glen Long Course
- Car: Lexus LC500 ’17 – Garage/Rental Car
- Power/Weight/PP Limit: BOP (M)
- Tires: Sports Hard
- Settings: Fixed
Gran Turismo 7 Lap Time Challenge January 1 – Dragon Trail
- Track: Dragon Trail Seaside
- Car: Pagani Zonda R ’09 – Garage/Rental Car
- Power/Weight/PP Limit: BOP (M)
- Tires: Racing Soft
- Settings: Fixed
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