Gran Turismo’s Biggest Enigma

It figures that one of my longest videos would be about endurance races, huh?

Music (in order):

Moonlit Wilderness - Satoru Kousaki (Tekken 5)
Get Closer - Masahiro Andoh (Gran Turismo)
Get Into It - Masahiro Andoh (Gran Turismo 2)
Sky Scraper - Daiki Kasho (Gran Turismo 3)
Heaven - Daiki Kasho (Gran Turismo 4 Prologue)
My Precious - Daiki Kasho (Gran Turismo 4)
Drive On Coins - Gonno (Gran Turismo 5)
Continuation - Daiki Kasho (Gran Turismo 6)
Vanquish - Powerless (Gran Turismo Sport)
Nu York Dub - Lenny Ibizarre (Gran Turismo 7)
Galabria - Lenny Ibizarre (Gran Turismo 7)
Menu - Gavin Parker (Test Drive Le Mans)
Timze Money - William Russell Parnell (Race Driver GRID)

Channels credited:

Sources:

0:00 Introduction
2:31 How Do We Define an ‘Endurance’ Race?
3:30 Gran Turismo (1997)
7:14 Gran Turismo 2 (1999)
10:48 Gran Turismo 3 (2001)
14:38 Gran Turismo 4 (2004)
22:25 Gran Turismo 5 (2010)
27:46 Gran Turismo 6 (2013)
33:11 Gran Turismo Sport (2017)
37:12 Gran Turismo 7 (2022)
42:25 Summary of All Games
43:17 The Endurance Race Enigma

[at_Wild]

GT 5 adding a mid race save function is the ONE THING I wanted all endurance modes to have. I don't have hours to burn, so being able to play the race over a few sessions is something I can only dream of.

[CyanRooper]

What if you
Wanted to go to heaven
But God said
"Nah bro, first you gotta win a 24 hour Le Mans race with a Fiat 500 in Gran Turismo"

[Searly]

the old GTR2 was great for making mock endurance races because it allowed you huge grids and to set the day night cycle to 6x meaning 24 hours in an hour or so, i used to love that

[flowersnaught]

24 hrs nur with my highschool friend during summer break and legit doing 4 hr stints is one of my favorite memories. Thank you GT4.

[cozza]

6/7 years old, waking up at 6am on Saturday morning to do a 3 hour endurance before my mum and dad woke up

[LeyvatenLoop]

One thing that GT4 introduced that people usually just forget about is chassis degradation, and it plays quite a big role in the 24 hours races. When a car is new, the chassis is nice and rigid, but after a while it starts to lose rigidity due to stress (also, when you buy an used car that doesn't have low mileage, it also comes with fully degraded chassis), and the loss of rigidity makes the faster cars behave quite badly, especially under braking. Using the rigidity upgrade will often make racecars overly stiff, but it will also delay the chassis degradation, allowing you to use a rigid car for longer, and the rigidity refreshment plan option allows you to reset the chassis degradation back to zero.
Also, oil does something similar, a fresh oil change will give you a boost of 5% to your engine's power, but will slowly start to drop back to 0 after 500km has been driven.

[makmakg]

GT4 Endurance Races: *exists*
PCSX2 savestates: *exists*

[PaulTheFox]

I finally finished the nurburgring 24 hour race without using b-spec mode for the very first time a couple of days ago in GT4, and honestly it was the most exhausting thing I've ever done in gaming despite only racing for roughly 1 to 3 hours a day.

My poor PS2 was begging for mercy by the end, as was my body.

[DustinEdenYT]

There's really only been one game where I thoroughly enjoyed endurance racing, and it's as far removed from something like Gran Turismo as you can imagine.
The Crew (the first one) had faction missions which could last from as little as five minutes to several hours depending on the event. The massive map with its different cities and regions, dynamic time and weather but also things like traffic and wild life made them very exciting. I also liked how they had different themes based on where the race would lead, such as a race from coast to coast, or one around the borders of the map, or the longest one taking you along all major landmarks in the United States. These faction missions were the only time where I felt the game really took advantage of its huge map and it's been a shame that subsequent titles couldn't scratch that same itch. The Crew 2 added the ability to switch vehicle types on the fly - even adding planes, boats and bikes while also adding more roads to the map. Yet the longest race in that game is just around 30 minutes and only uses road cars. What a damn shame

[PEPSIMaxMusic]

It's a massive shame that Polyphony have dropped the ball with Endurance races since GT6, especially when other Racing games like GRiD (2007) had figured out the best way to do it, where you choose how long the race is, so you can scale it to what's doable for you. If you want the full on realism, you can do the full 24 Hours. If you don't have a lot of free time, you can make it 20 minutes.

[MrRagemanPL]

24 minute races were a brilliant idea, much more approachable for people afraid of full on endurance racing. What Polyphony should have done was to have them alongside the classic long events not instead of them.

[rossstewart]

In the always-online gaming landscape, there's one place where I feel endurance races could shine: Co-operative, consecutive, multiplayer.

We often paused and handed off the controller to a friend back in the day, so why not make that mechanic official? You and your friends sign up as a race team and when the first driver pits, their race ends. The next member of the team could receive a notification to say their race is available, and when they load up they could begin from where the first driver left of; Repeat until the race is complete. Minimum two drivers required, and only limited on the upper limit by how many times you'd need to pit.

Obviously this can only work against AI opponents, but otherwise I suspect all the mechanics already exist to make something like this function. Maybe that's a niche feature, but I'd play it!

[vinzo]

Gran Turismo 4. I managed to beat nürburgring 24 hours in 1 sitting. No B-Spec, no pause breaks, I wanted a challenge. I fell asleep briefly for an hour mid way through and had to fight to gain the lead again, but I won in the end. Never. Again.

[merthyr]

I once tried doing the 24hrs Nur in one sitting - No B-Spec driver to help me along either. I very quickly learned how debilitating exhaustion could be lmao

[adrielquiroga]

One thing they can do to improve fully fledged endurance races would be to give the player more info. Like, what tyres are the AI on and what would be their normal strategy, some suggestions for your own strategy, pitloss, etc.

[HeyItsAJOmega]

10:24 - funny you specifically mention using US muscle cars at the Seattle City 100 event in GT2, as this is how I got one of my all-time favourite races in any Gran Turismo game! I used a 1970 Dodge Challenger in this exact race, not just a US muscle car but a vintage one - having noticed that the AI were hopeless in the classic muscle cars, and all the main contenders were racing modern ones (97 Camaros, 99 Mustangs, Vipers etc). So tuning up the old Challenger with mainly a few handling mods (no horsepower upgrades!) I ended up having an epic cat and mouse battle with two modern Camaros all race long, only made the pass for the win with two laps to go, and my MOV was I think under 2 seconds? Just a fantastic race! Perfect demonstration of the point you made - entering cars in the spirit of the event, and/or experimenting with handicaps and such, can create such absolute MAGIC in GT endurance races :)

[dylanksturbo]

I adore the GT endurance racing! The Grand Valley 300km to me is just legendary. My favorite original track tied with High Speed Ring.

[gavinwavy]

As someone who’s first Motorsport love was NASCAR and then grown to love all forms of racing, it kind of saddens me that there was no Daytona 500 or brickyard 400 endurance races in gt5. They had officially licensed stock cars and NASCAR tracks, wished there would have been just 1 NASCAR themed race

[krazyfinndude]

I love the usage of Tekken soundtracks in your vids. After hearing the intro of this vid with the Moonlit Wilderness from Tekken 5, I knew this was gonna be a banger video

[BennyBallbreaker]

I have so many great memories of completing the Endurance races of video games past. From the early days of Gran Turismo and staying up way late with my two brothers, grinding out that last Super Speedway run. All the way to the early Forza entries, when me and the boys would take shifts every 30 minutes on the Maple Valley Endurance to get that next 250K lick. It’s been imbedded in me at such a young age to run long races, so naturally when I see a 25+ lap race, my eyes light up. Great video, you’ve REALLY been hanging them out lately!