A day after confirming what we all expected — Deep Forest Raceway is returning to the Gran Turismo series in GT7 — Polyphony Digital has shown off a 4K cockpit video of the new track, revealing the changes to the circuit.
The video shows a full lap of the track’s brand new design for 2022, and while it looks and feels very familiar for the most part, there’s one radical alteration which fans will spot right away.
For the lap we ride on board with a Lamborghini Murcielago, and to start with it’s just like it used to be. The start/finish line is still along an undulating main straight, and there’s a heavy braking zone into a tight hairpin left.
From there the cars wind uphill, with the corners seeming to be slightly sharper this time round, into the right-hander under the first bridge. The first split comes between the two bridges as it did previous.
However this is where the changes start to appear in earnest. The corner exiting the second bridge doesn’t have the elevation changes of before, and then the track begins to plunge towards what used to be a long double-apex onto the back uphill straight. This now has two distinct stages, with the first corner notably shallow before the track crosses over an access for a very sharp left.
That uphill climb is also much longer than before, with a pair of far shallower curves as you climb through the semi-tunnel and then the proper tunnel, before the most significant change of all.
Whereas previously this final section consisted of a mid-speed left, leading down the hill through a left kink onto the final sweeping left, there’s now a sharp hairpin left. That opens into a right-handed curve, with a short straight — and the pitlane to the infield — before the final left.
One thing we don’t yet know, and can’t glean from this clip, is where in the world Deep Forest is going to be set. All the other GT7 track, real and fictional, have a spot on the game’s globe, so we’ll have to wait and see.
A couple of other things we did catch in the video include a first look at the returning Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione, and the R35-generation Nissan GT-R Nismo 2017, and the appearance on the track banner of “Tecpro”. This real-life company manufactures the modular, deformable safety barriers used in the real world — notably in F1. It may just be a decorative piece of branding, but it may also hint at the first appearance in the series of Tecpro barriers.
Of course we’ll bring you more on all the latest Gran Turismo 7 news as we get it, and don’t forget to check out our Ultimate Guide to Gran Turismo 7 to keep up-to-date on everything to do with GT7.
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