The Olympic Games is set to crown its first ever digital champions today, and among them will be Gran Turismo players.
Today marks Olympic Day, the 127th anniversary of the founding of the International Olympic Committee and the modern Olympic Games. It’s appropriate then that today will also see the first medallists in an entirely new discipline for the games.
Following the qualification event last month, 16 drivers from six continents won the right to be their nation’s representative for the first Olympic Virtual Series. These 16 will now go head to head across three races to determine not only who’ll be among the first digital medal winners, but also the first official Olympic motorsport medallists.
The 16 finalists include some familiar names to Gran Turismo fans. All three of the individual world champions — Igor Fraga (Brazil), Mikail Hizal (Germany), and Takuma Miyazono (Japan) — will represent their countries, along with defending Manufacturer Series champion Daniel Solis (USA).
One man to watch out for is Valerio Gallo (Italy). Gallo not only set the fastest time in qualifying, he won the recent World Series Round 1 event, and scored the most points on the day in 2020’s World Final to finish runner-up.
There’s also some newcomers, courtesy of the one driver per nation rule. The Olympic Virtual Series will be the first time we get to see Taj Aiman (Malaysia), Stanford Chau (Hong Kong), Konstantinos Konstantinou (Greece), Nikita Moysov (Czech Republic), and Nathayos Sirigaya (Thailand) in live event action. All were within 0.4s of Gallo’s fastest lap.
Our 16 finalists will drive in three different races over the event, with points for each — from 12 for winning down to one for finishing tenth — and double points in the final race. All three use Toyota cars, decked in special Olympic liveries:
- Race 1 — Toyota 86 GT Gr.4; Tokyo Expressway – East Outer Loop; 7 laps
- Race 2 — Toyota GR Yaris; Sardegna – Road Track B; 13 laps
- Race 3 — Toyota GR Supra Racing Concept; Dragon Trail – Seaside; 18 laps
As usual, the final race will require drivers to use all three different tire compounds — Racing Hard, Medium, and Soft — for at least one lap, though the second race also has a mandatory tire requirement with hard and medium compounds.
The Olympic Virtual Series final will broadcast throughout June 23, covering all six of the digital events. Gran Turismo fans will need to tune in at 1600 UTC (convert to your time here), and you can watch it in full below.
Competitors
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It was super annoying that they cut away from Tom and Jimmer analyzing the races and showed the 2 hosts who had no idea about the whole thing… It reminded me of the first McLaren Shadow live show that Igor Fraga won. Although that broadcast was by many-many miles worse than anything I’ve ever seen in terms of esports broadcast, however, cutting away from probably the highest production quality motorsport esport broadcast team… super annoying…
Terrible day to put this on when there was stacks of sport already on.
From an English perspective:
2 x Euro games at 5pm i.e 4pm UTC.
2 x Euro games at 8pm
World Test Cricket Championship final day – 11am-7pm
Cricket T20 England Vs Sri Lanka – 6:30pm.
Surely there must have been a better slot just before the Olympics to show these events?
What a line up. Have to watch this.
Great to see Fraga and Hizal once again.