Rumours kicked into gear last night that Gran Turismo 7 was going to add Albert Park to its track list.
This was all sparked by a clip posted over the weekend featuring GT Academy champion Lucas Ordonez & new GT Online Championship Manufacturer Series champion Coque Lopez (what a mouthful) in which the Australian track map was hanging from the wall behind the two esports stars.
That's no guarantee that Albert Park will be added to GT7, but it should. Along with basically every Formula 1 circuit Polyphony can manage.
More than the usual fair
Every racing game worth the name will have Silverstone, Spa, and Monza among its track list. But what about the other F1 hosts?
So far we know that Interlagos, Monza, Barcelona-Catalunya, Spa, the Red Bull Ring, and Suzuka will feature in GT7. That's a good list of F1 tracks and we would expect Silverstone to be added to it.
But there is no reason for Polyphony to stop there. Not too many racing games have added COTA to their roster yet, but we know it's coming to Assetto Corsa Competizione later this year. Adding it to GT7 would be amazing.
We'd also love to run everything from our Sunday Cup cars to the W08 around Imola.
The Albert Park tease is a peculiar choice but it would certainly be a fun track to tackle in Gran Turismo.
There are some F1 tracks, like Singapore and Abu Dhabi, that would be less fun in GT7 but we often see Monaco (Cote d'Azur) in Gran Turismo games so why not throw Baku in too?
Choice is crucial
Giving players options in how they race is important, and the more tracks there are the more choice there is.
Tracks fill the same function as maps in a FPS game. If the selection is limited it quickly becomes repetitive. Gran Turismo has always maintained a good rotation of circuits thanks to inventing plenty of them rather than relying on real-life ones, but expanding the pool is no bad thing.
We are expecting around 90 circuits in Gran Turismo 7, but that will include variations which will trim the number of actual unique locations considerably.
Expanding the options by letting us run our Gr.2 cars around Albert Park or Bahrain would only be a win for everyone.
With GT7's life-span expected to be aroun 4-5 years there is plenty of time for Polyphony to add more tracks as DLC and updates. We hope they will choose to.