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 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) and the Manufacturers Cup (entrants will race for and represent their chosen manufacturer). The series uses Polyphony Digital's latest simGran Turismo 7.[2]
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.[3]
The Nations Cup and Manufacturers Cup trophies are laser-scanned reproductions of Italian sculptor Umberto Boccioni's 1913 bronzefuturist 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.[4] 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,[5]Genesis,[6]Mazda,[7]Michelin,[8]Brembo,[9]Sony Alpha, BBS,[10] and Fanatec[11] serve as the series partners of the World Series. The series is provided with clothing by Puma and peripherals by Fanatec. 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.[12]Players can participate in the Online Series from within the Sport mode of Gran Turismo 7. Players that register are separated in three leagues based on in-game driver rating; 'GT1 League' with a driver rating of A and higher, 'GT2 League' with a driver rating of B, and 'GT3 League' with a driver rating of C and lower. However, only those in the GT1 League are eligible for participation in the World Series and World Finals live events.[13]
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.[14] 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).[15]
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.[16][17] 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.[18][19][20] 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.[21] 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.[3][22][23] 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 to professional racing drivers, including former Formula One driver Juan Pablo Montoya and seven-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton.[24] 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',[25] 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.[26][27]
List of entries
Nations Cup
Participating countries
Europe, Middle East & Africa
North America
Central & South America
Asia
Oceania
Austria Bahrain Belgium Bulgaria Croatia Czechia Denmark Finland France Germany Great Britain Greece Hungary
Iceland India Ireland Israel Italy Kuwait Lebanon Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Oman Poland Portugal
Qatar Romania Saudi Arabia Slovakia Slovenia South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Ukraine United Arab Emirates
Canada United States
Argentina Brazil Chile Colombia Costa Rica Ecuador El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Mexico Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Uruguay
China Hong Kong Indonesia Japan Korea Malaysia Singapore Taiwan Thailand
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.[28]
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.[29] 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.[29] 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.[29][30] The Online Series goes on for five to seven months.[29]
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.[31] 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.[32]
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.[21]
2023 season
The Nations Cup format saw a switch from a single-driver series to a team-based event, a format previously used by Polyphony Digital in 2018 at the Hangar-7 World Tour.[33]
The online season was divided into fourteen online races (seven rounds per series), in which top players would race against each other to determine who would qualify for both the Showdown event in August and for the World Tour grand finals in December. For the new team-based Nations Cup format, entries were decided based on the highest finishing players affiliated with their country in the points standings. The top three competitors of each country would form the lineup for their respective team.
Events with live audiences also returned in 2023 for the first time since the 2020 Sydney World Tour event, with the Showdown round in Theater Amsterdam at Amsterdam, the Netherlands.[34]
Leagues
Players can participate in the Online Series from within the Sport mode of Gran Turismo 7. Players that register are separated in three leagues based on in-game driver rating; 'GT1 League' with a driver rating of A and higher, 'GT2 League' with a driver rating of B, and 'GT3 League' with a driver rating of C and lower. However, only those in the GT1 League are eligible for participation in the World Series and World Finals live events.[35]
In other media
World Series drivers including previous champions Igor 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.[36]
There have been seven different Nations Cup champions and fifteen different individual Manufacturers Series champions as of 2024, in addition to six different winners in the Toyota GR GT Cup.
Six drivers – Igor Fraga, Tomoaki Yamanaka, Takuma Miyazono, Daniel Solis, Coque López, and Kanata Kawakami – hold the most individual Manufacturer Series titles with two each, Fraga and Yamanaka for Toyota, Miyazono and Solis for Subaru, and Kawakami and López for Lexus.
Takuma Miyazono is currently the most successful driver in the Gran Turismo World Series, with a total of five individual championship titles to his name: one Toyota GR GT Cup title, two Nations Cup titles and two Manufacturers Cup titles. Igor Fraga and Coque López hold a total of four individual championship titles each, with Fraga having one Toyota GR GT Cup title, one Nations Cup title and two Manufacturer Series titles, and López having two Nations Cup titles and two Manufacturer Series titles. Miyazono scored a treble in 2020 by winning the Toyota GR GT Cup and both GT World Series championships. López became the first repeat Nations Cup champion after scoring a second consecutive Nations Cup championship title in 2023 alongside his compatriots José Serrano and Pol Urra, the latter of whom also won that year's Toyota GR GT Cup championship, which ran a teams format that year.
Igor Fraga, Mikail Hizal, Takuma Miyazono, and Coque López are the only World Series champions to have won both the Nations Cup and Manufacturers Cup championships. Fraga is also the only participant to have won a championship in both the Gran Turismo World Series and real-world motorsport.[39]
^Takuma Miyazono tested positive for COVID-19 a day prior to the start of the World Series 2022 Showdown and was forbidden to participate.
^Coque López was tied in points with Angel Inostroza by the conclusion of the event, but since he won the Grand Final in Monaco, he had the tiebreaker advantage in the standings for the championship.
^Subaru was tied in points with Toyota by the conclusion of the event, but since they won the Grand Final in Monaco, they had the tiebreaker advantage in the standings for the championship.
^Angel Inostroza suffered a leg injury prior to the start of the World Series 2023 Showdown and subsequently withdrew from the event.
^Despite winning the Grand Final race in Amsterdam, BMW were behind Lexus in the final Manufacturers Cup standings by one point, therefore the championship title went to Lexus.
