Gran Turismo World Series

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Gran Turismo World Series
Current season, competition or edition:
Current sports event 2022 GTWS season
Formerly
  • FIA-Certified Gran Turismo Championships (2018-2021)
Sport Esports
Founded 2017; 8 years ago (2017)
Inaugural season 2018
Owner(s) Polyphony Digital
Commissioner Kazunori Yamauchi
Countries Worldwide
Most recent champion(s) Toyota GR GT Cup
Brazil Igor Fraga
Nations Cup
Spain Coque López
Manufacturers Cup
France Kylian Drumont
Japan Takuma Miyazono
United States Daniel Solis
Most titles Brazil Igor Fraga (4)
(1 Toyota GR GT Cup, 1 Nations, 2 Manufacturers)
Japan Takuma Miyazono (4)
(1 Toyota GR GT Cup, 1 Nations, 2 Manufacturers)
Sponsor(s) BBS, Brembo, Genesis, Mazda, Michelin, Sony Alpha, Toyota
Founder Kazunori Yamauchi
Official website Official website

The Gran Turismo World Series (also referred to as the GTWS) is a series of professional Gran Turismo world championship esports tournaments, managed directly by Japanese game development studio Polyphony Digital.[1] The championship contains two series that are held concurrently throughout the year: the Nations Cup (entrants from their respective countries will represent them), the Manufacturer Series (entrants will race for and represent their chosen manufacturer). The series uses Polyphony Digital's latest racing video game Gran Turismo 7.

Through 2018 to 2021, the Gran Turismo World Series was previously sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile. Polyphony Digital's partnership with the FIA is currently on hiatus.[2]

The Nations Cup and Manufacturers Cup trophies are laser-scanned reproductions of Italian sculptor Umberto Boccioni's 1913 bronze futurist sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, chosen by Polyphony Digital as it represents the “surprise and fascination of machines first discovered by mankind”, and also shares values held by the Gran Turismo series.[3] Players are given a plaque for their participation in the series during live events and by the end of the year. Players who finish in the Top 3 in any series receive a gold plaque and a trophy. Players were also formerly given a TAG Heuer watch, but no longer became a prize after their partnership with Polyphony ended in 2020; a set of Sony Alpha photography equipment were given out that year, followed by a set of BBS wheels for 2021.

Toyota,[4] Genesis,[5] Mazda,[6] Michelin,[7] Brembo,[8] Sony Alpha, and BBS[9] serve as the series partners of the World Series. The series is provided with clothing by Puma and peripherals by Thrustmaster. All virtual races in the tournament take place in specified locations all around the globe. In addition to the live studio audiences at the specified locations, the tournaments are streamed live in YouTube through several languages. The series has since made an impact in real-world motorsport, serving as a basis for virtual players in terms of possibly starting a career in esports before jumping into real-world motorsport.[10]

History

Polyphony Digital announced its partnership with governing body Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile in June 2014 to provide a more realistic racing experience in virtual motorsport. It permitted the Japanese studio to feature content certified by the FIA and launch an online championship in Gran Turismo 6 for the following year in 2015.[11] It would be the earliest example of an official online championship managed by Polyphony Digital and sanctioned by the FIA. The following year in 2016, Polyphony and the FIA announced the formation of the FIA-Certified Gran Turismo Championships (FIA GTC).[12]

The FIA GTC was established in Gran Turismo Sport shortly after the game's release. Many test seasons ran from 2017 to 2018, and the first official season commenced that year. The first World Tour was also held at Nürburgring, which saw Giorgio Mangano from Italy as the first Nations Cup event winner, and Philippe Nicolay, Matthew Thomas, and Anthony Duval, representing BMW as the first Manufacturer Series event winners.[13][14] Former FIA Formula 3 Championship driver Igor Fraga became the inaugural Nations Cup champion in 2018, and Kanata Kawakami, Vincent Rigaud, and Tyrell Meadows also became the inaugural Manufacturer Series champions that year.[15][16][17] As part of the FIA's involvement as a sanctioning body for the series, the champions were also honoured at the FIA Prize Giving Ceremony.

The format for the series changed in 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.[18] All previously planned live events were dropped, and the season would instead be held online.

The series transferred over to Gran Turismo 7 for the 2022 season. Polyphony's partnership with the FIA was also put on hiatus that year, with FIA's Director of Innovative Sporting Projects, Frederic Bertrand, stating that they would resume the collaboration once Gran Turismo 7 becomes a sufficiently stable platform.[2][19][20] As a result, the FIA name was dropped, and the tournament was renamed to the Gran Turismo World Series (GTWS). Two live events were reintroduced as part of the 2022 season, with the series returning to Hangar-7 in Salzburg, Austria for the Showdown and Monte-Carlo Sporting in Monte Carlo, Monaco for the World Finals.

The tournament has also hosted exhibition races since 2019. One of these exhibition races is known as 'Pro-Am', where competitors of the series would pair with various personalities, spanning from content creators, journalists, and professional racing drivers including former Formula One driver Juan Pablo Montoya and seven-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton.[21] Exhibition races have also been hosted by Sony's artificial intelligence department, Sony AI, where select series drivers race against their agent known as 'Gran Turismo Sophy',[22] developed in collaboration by Sony AI, Sony Interactive Entertainment, and Polyphony Digital. This race is also used as a testing ground for Sony's AI team to evaluate Sophy's pace and behaviour on the race track.[23][24]

Format

2018 season

Before the "Online Series" is started, every season begins with a "World Tour" event, containing the top drivers from the season prior. The winner from the World Tour event gains direct access to the "World Final" event.[25]

A phase dubbed as the "Online Series", which is essentially a qualification phase to decide the participants that will race in the live events of the championship tournament, kicks off every season. The Online Series is divided into four stages, with each stage hosting ten rounds.[26] By the end of each stage, another World Tour event is hosted, which includes the top players from that stage instead of the top drivers from the previous season.[26] The top players who are selected after the series must sign an application form in order to be able to participate for the World Tour events, and they must also be over 18.[26][27] The Online Series goes on for five to seven months.[26]

The "Live Events" begin after the Online Series. The Nations Cup category includes the top 90 players (30 per region) with the highest points across all four stages. Three different live events occur, with each live event carrying a specific world region. The top 10 players from those regions enter the "World Final" event, a championship stage to decide the number one player. The Manufacturer Series category includes the top 48 players (three players per region) and 16 manufacturers with the highest points across all four stages. The top players and manufacturers participate in the "World Final" event, to decide the top three players and the number one manufacturer.[28] The winners of their respective series at the "World Final" are crowned either Nations Cup champion or Manufacturer Series champion.

2020 season

Format changes during COVID-19 pandemic

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was announced that the 2020 World Finals would be held as an online-based event.[29]

Further format changes were made for 2021, where the online season (named World Series) was divided into six online races (replacing the physical World Tours), four of them containing one race for Nations Cup and Manufacturer Series, plus the mid-season "Showdown" playoff races and the grand finals, which were aired as tape delayed streams. The first two World Series races featured top competitors from the previous season (16 Nations Cup drivers and 12 Manufacturer Series players that chose the same manufacturer as with the previous season, with limit of one player per brand), after which they would race together against top players from the first half of the online qualifiers (the in-game races accessible to the general public) in the Showdown to determine who would advance to the next two stages. Players that advanced to the third and fourth round would then face opponents that qualified in the second half of the online qualifiers through the same criteria in the grand finals.[18]

In other media

World Series drivers including previous champions Fraga, Mikail Hizal, Takuma Miyazono, Tomoaki Yamanaka, Valerio Gallo, Coque López, and Daniel Solis appear in Gran Turismo 7 as AI opponents and License Test coaches.[30]

Media coverage

The World Series races are usually streamed live from Dock10 studios[31] on YouTube and Twitch under the official Gran Turismo and PlayStation channels, and are available to watch through several languages.[citation needed]

Presenter Language
Jimmy Broadbent English
Tom Brooks
Julia Hardy
Michel Wolk German
Florian Strauss
Donald Reignoux French
Fabian Tarakci
Andrea Facchinetti Italian
Emilio Cozzi
Alberto Perez Spanish
Lucas Ordóñez
Duarte Félix da Costa Portuguese
Gonçalo Comes

Series champions

There have been five different Nations Cup champions and eleven different individual Manufacturers Series champions since the series' foundation, in addition to four different winners in the Toyota GR GT Cup.

There are currently no multiple time Nations Cup champions, as each season has had a different champion each time. Igor Fraga from Brazil, along with Tomoaki Yamanaka and Takuma Miyazono from Japan, and Daniel Solis from the United States, hold the most individual Manufacturer Series titles with two each, Fraga and Yamanaka for Toyota, and Miyazono and Solis for Subaru. Fraga and Miyazono hold the most championship titles in total with four, each holding one Toyota GR GT Cup title, one Nations Cup title, and two individual Manufacturer Series titles. Miyazono also scored a treble in 2020 by winning the Toyota GR GT Cup and both GT World Series championships. Fraga is also the only participant to have won a championship in both the Gran Turismo World Series and real-world motorsport.[32]

Igor Fraga, Mikail Hizal, Takuma Miyazono, and Coque López are the only winners who have won both the Nations Cup and Manufacturer Series championships.

Season Toyota GR GT Cup Nations Cup Manufacturers Series
2018 Not held Brazil Igor Fraga Japan Kanata Kawakami
United States Tyrell Meadows
France Vincent Rigaud		 Japan Lexus
2019 Germany Mikail Hizal Germany Mikail Hizal France Rayan Derrouiche
Brazil Igor Fraga
Japan Tomoaki Yamanaka		 Japan Toyota
2020 Japan Takuma Miyazono Japan Takuma Miyazono Germany Mikail Hizal
Japan Takuma Miyazono
United States Daniel Solis		 Japan Subaru
2021 Japan Tomoaki Yamanaka Italy Valerio Gallo Brazil Igor Fraga
Spain Coque López
Japan Tomoaki Yamanaka		 Japan Toyota
2022 Brazil Igor Fraga Spain Coque López France Kylian Drumont
Japan Takuma Miyazono
United States Daniel Solis		 Japan Subaru

Past competitions

  • Bold indicates world championship events.
Season Game Event Venue Date Nations Cup Manufacturers Series Ref
2018 Gran Turismo Sport World Tour 2018 - Nürburgring Nürburg, Germany 10-13 May Italy Giorgio Mangano France Anthony Duval
Luxembourg Philippe Nicolay
United Kingdom Matthew Thomas		 Germany BMW [13][14]
World Tour 2018 - Red Bull Hangar-7 Salzburg, Austria 22 September Hungary Patrik Blazsán
Hungary Ádám Tápai
Hungary Benjámin Báder		 Germany Mikail Hizal
United States Andrew McCabe		 Japan Nissan [33]
Nations Cup Asia/Oceania Final 2018 Odaiba, Japan 6-7 October Japan Ryota Kokubun Not held [34]
Nations Cup European Final 2018 Madrid, Spain 19-20 October Germany Mikail Hizal [35]
Nations Cup Americas Final 2018 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA 31 October Brazil Igor Fraga [36]
World Finals 2018 Monte Carlo, Monaco 16-18 November Brazil Igor Fraga Japan Kanata Kawakami
United States Tyrell Meadows
France Vincent Rigaud		 Japan Lexus [15][37]
2019 World Tour 2019 - Paris Paris, France 16-17 March Chile Nicolas Rubilar United Kingdom Thomas Compton-McPherson
Japan Yoshiharu Imai
United States Christopher Marcell		 United Kingdom Aston Martin [38]
World Tour 2019 - Nürburgring Nürburg, Germany 21-22 June Brazil Igor Fraga New Zealand Simon Bishop
Netherlands Rick Kevelham
Japan Tomoaki Yamanaka		 Japan Toyota [39]
World Tour 2019 - New York New York City, New York, USA 24-25 August Brazil Igor Fraga United States Anthony Felix
Australia Cody Nikola Latkovski
Costa Rica Bernal Valverde		 Germany Mercedes-AMG [40]
World Tour 2019 - Red Bull Hangar-7 Salzburg, Austria 13-14 September Germany Mikail Hizal United States Anthony Felix
France Tom Lartilleux
Australia Cody Nikola Latkovski		 Germany Mercedes-AMG [41]
World Tour 2019 - Tokyo Tokyo, Japan 26-27 October Japan Ryota Kokubun United States Tristan Bayless
Chile Angel Inostroza
Australia Matt Simmons		 Germany Porsche [42]
World Finals 2019 Monte Carlo, Monaco 22-24 November Germany Mikail Hizal France Rayan Derrouiche
Brazil Igor Fraga
Japan Tomoaki Yamanaka		 Japan Toyota [43][44]
2020 World Tour 2020 - Sydney Sydney, Australia 15-16 February Japan Takuma Miyazono United States Randall Haywood
Spain Coque López
Chile Nicolás Rubilar		 Germany BMW [45]
World Tour 2020 - Nürburgring Nürburg, Germany 22-23 May Cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the postponement of 2020 24 Hours of Nürburgring [46]
Nations Cup EMEA Regional Final 2020 Online 22 November Spain Coque López Not held [47]
Nations Cup Americas Regional Final 2020 29 November Brazil Adriano Carrazza [48]
Nations Cup Asia-Oceania Regional Final 2020 6 December Japan Takuma Miyazono [49]
World Finals 2020 19-20 December Japan Takuma Miyazono Germany Mikail Hizal
Japan Takuma Miyazono
United States Daniel Solis		 Japan Subaru [50][51]
2021 World Series 2021 Round 1 6 June Italy Valerio Gallo Chile Angel Inostroza Germany Porsche [52]
World Series 2021 Round 2 11 July Hungary Patrik Blazsán Japan Takuma Miyazono Japan Subaru [53]
World Series 2021 Showdown 21-22 August Japan Ryota Kokubun Brazil Igor Fraga
Spain Coque López
Japan Tomoaki Yamanaka		 Japan Toyota [54][55]
World Series 2021 Round 3 3 October Italy Valerio Gallo Spain José Serrano Germany Porsche [56]
World Series 2021 Round 4 14 November Italy Valerio Gallo Brazil Igor Fraga Japan Toyota [57]
World Finals 2021 3-5 December Italy Valerio Gallo Brazil Igor Fraga
Spain Coque López
Japan Tomoaki Yamanaka		 Japan Toyota [58][59]
2022 Gran Turismo 7 World Series 2022 Round 1 23-24 July Brazil Lucas Bonelli Japan Takuma Miyazono Japan Subaru [60]
World Series 2022 Showdown Salzburg, Austria 30-31 July France Kylian Drumont France Kylian Drumont
Japan Takuma Miyazono[lower-alpha 1]
United States Daniel Solis		 Japan Subaru [61][62][63]
World Series 2022 Round 2 Online 25 September
9 October		 Chile Angel Inostroza Brazil Igor Fraga Japan Toyota [64][65]
World Series 2022 Round 3 6 November
13 November		 Spain José Serrano Japan Ryota Kokubun Japan Toyota [66][67]
World Finals 2022 Monte Carlo, Monaco 25-27 November Spain Coque López[lower-alpha 2] France Kylian Drumont
Japan Takuma Miyazono
United States Daniel Solis		 Japan Subaru[lower-alpha 3] [68][69][70]

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References

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External links

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  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  31. ↑ https://www.dock10.co.uk/about/news/the-world-series-showdown/
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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