There’s something of a theme to the latest Gran Turismo 7 Lap Time Challenge event, starting today, offering players around the world a chance to go for a blast around one of the world’s most infamous courses in an unforgiving classic homologation model.
Lap Time Challenges are global hot lap competitions, which see players trying to set the fastest lap time they can over a two-week entry period. At least two events run at once, offset so that there’s a new one each week replacing the older of the two at about 0700 UTC every Thursday.
As the saying goes, there can be only one winner, but there’s credits available to all players depending on how close you get to that final world record at the end of the event — and only that final record. You can pick up two million credits for finishing within 3% (“Gold”), one million for being within 5% (“Silver”), or 250,000cr for a what’s a rather sluggish 10% (“Bronze”).
Gran Turismo 7 Lap Time Challenge May 7th – Nurburgring
- Track: Nurburgring 24hr
- Car: Porsche 911 (901) Carrera RS ’73 – Garage/Rental Car
- Power/Weight/PP Limit: BOP (H)
- Tyres: Sports Medium
- Settings: Fixed
- Target Estimates: 🥇 9:43.000; 🥈 9:55.000; 🥉 10:25.000
You’ll be driving a classic Porsche from the RS stable, an abbreviation for “RennSport” (basically the German for “motorsport) and usually indicating a car made with the race track in mind. In fact this classic ’73 model was a homologation special built to make the 901-generation 911 eligible for Group 4 racing.
Where else would you take this car than its spiritual home, the Nurburgring? In fact it’s the 24hr layout of the circuit, combining the modern GP course (which didn’t exist in 1973) and the Nordschleife (which, of course, did), for a pretty gruelling ten-or-so minutes.
The car itself is only available in the Legends Cars dealer and actually isn’t, at time of writing, due to the stock rotation. That means if you don’t already have one you’ll need to borrow one at no cost; you may prefer to, in order to lessen the guilt of stacking it repeatedly and because it’ll come with the required Sports Medium tyres already.
With it being a vast track, small percentage differences add up to huge time gaps and we’re not really going to be clear on what’s possible for a while. You’ll find our usual target estimates above, but we’ll re-assess next week.
Gran Turismo 7 Lap Time Challenge April 30th – Trial Mountain
- Track: Trial Mountain
- Car: Gr.3 – Garage/Rental Car
- Power/Weight/PP Limit: BOP (M)
- Tyres: Racing Hard
- Settings: Fixed
- Target Estimates: 🥇 1:53.500; 🥈 1:55.750; 🥉 2:01.000
There’s been surprisingly little movement over the past week on this event, with only a couple of tenths taken off the world record as the top players pretty rapidly found the limit on this relatively familiar combination. That does mean that our estimated targets from last week are starting to look a little pessimistic.
We reckon you’ll only need to be a tenth below the current markers displayed in game to all-but guarantee your reward, but we’re going to keep our estimates to give you an idea of a goal to be absolutely sure of it come Thursday 14th May.
Recommended Car: Porsche 911 (992) GT3 R ’22
Gran Turismo 7 Lap Time Challenges Overview
You’ll need to unlock Sport Mode to access the Lap Time Challenges, by completing GT Cafe Menu Book 9 (“Championship: Tokyo Highway Parade”). They’re listed alongside Daily Races in the top menu of this section and also known as Online Time Trials. Although they’re part of this multiplayer hub, you won’t need a PlayStation Plus subscription to take part in these events as they do not run head-to-head directly against other players.
The events update on Thursday each week, with the oldest of the two concurrent events being replaced with a new one. Special events may also run from time to time, occasionally for one region’s players but more often than not tied into a global event or brand/vehicle promotion.