The Thin Red Racing Line

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Size doesn’t matter. Or at least that’s the view of Mr Gran Turismo, Kazunori Yamauchi, when it comes to GT Sport, the first Gran Turismo on PlayStation 4. While PlayStation 3’s Gran Turismo 6 crammed a staggering 1,197 cars into its garage, GT Sport has a more humble 140 speedsters to push to their limits. Numbers don’t mean a thing to GT Sport, though. After all, this isn’t GT 7, this is Sport.

With that Sport name comes a change in approach, a reaction to the chasing pack, which includes the eSports favourite Project Cars. GT Sport puts racing, and online competition in particular, above bumper-to-bumper colour-coded versions of Nissan’s Skyline GT-R cruising around Tokyo Expressway. This latest entry in Sony’s flagship racing series is about depth and competition. It’s about taking a smaller selection of cars and fine-tuning them, tweaking and tinkering under the hood to edge seconds off your lap times.

Ticking a box marked ‘put Project Cars in its place’, Sony has managed to get its online racing competitions – Nations Cup and Manufacturer Fan Cup – certified by the FIA. This is a first for a racing game, making GT Sport’s online tournaments the only current eSports events accredited to the real-life racing body. Naturally, the finals of both championships will be broadcast live online to a baying crowd.

THE SKYLINE’S THE LIMIT