This is my FIA-accredited (lol) championship esports race from Gran Turismo Sport a few weeks ago. 14 laps around Suzuka in the 2017 Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 car, alongside 17 other drivers on the grid. I secured pole position by 0.743 seconds, but things get spicy on the second lap.
RACE SPOILERZ below in the unlikely event you care.
I ended up setting the fastest lap of the race by about 0.8 seconds (that lap starts at 19:40). I lapped the entire grid up to 5th place, I lapped the entire grid twice up to ~11th place, and I lapped the grid up to 13th or 14th place three times. I finished first by 16 seconds.
I only pulled off one actual wheel-to-wheel overtake on lap 3. All of my other overtakes were the result of my rivals spinning out. I spent more time practicing for this race than any other FIA-championship race, as the Mercedes F1 car is a bit of a handful in the game. I was using a Fanatec CSL Elite wheel & pedal setup, no driver aids except for ABS (it’s extremely difficult to properly threshold brake in this game). I also spent a lot of time finding and practicing a good, consistent launch procedure. What I ended up with was this: launching in second gear with traction control set to 1. As soon as I’m into third gear I turn traction control off.
Fun race! The Mercedes F1 car is a lot of fun to drive once you’ve figured out exactly how to do so properly. It seems evident that most of the grid I was with either didn’t practice much with the car, or were using controllers (which I have to imagine would be difficult with this car).