Right before quarantine I bought a Logitech G29 steering wheel for the PS4, with Gran Turismo Sport. When all assistance are disabled, this game is quite hard to master. At first, I could barely finish a simple track without crashing my car. Fortunately, the game features a driving school mode that teaches the basics. After many hours practising, and more than 5,000 kilometers in game, here is what I can achieve. I can run a lap under 7 minutes on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, which is considered one of the most difficult tracks on earth. The 7 minutes time cap is not trivial, it’s actually a challenge in the game, and it took me some effort to achieve. With 154 turns total, the track is about 21 kilometers long. This means that I’m driving at 180 km/h on average. I use a stock Mercedes AMG GT3, with Racing Soft tires.

Here is the replay video:

I’m sure other people are way faster than me. But I believe it’s a good performance nevertheless. I made two big mistakes, but I didn’t want to record again.

• At 1:13: I change down a gear in the middle of the turn.
• At 5:43: I use gear 1 instead of gear 2, my engine is over-revving and I start slipping on the road.

In the future, I would love to race a track with a real car and see if my virtual skills translate to real ones. So far I went karting once, I did not do particularly well, mainly because it was very fast, shaking a lot and I feared I would crah into the wall. In the USA, I think it’s better to be not so fast and avoid a 5-digit hospital bill.