been enjoying the daily race 3 races. got a 2nd in one and 3rd in the other. its really weird though, im a lot better than most of the field, lapping some players in some instances, except for the top drivers in which i would finish 15+ seconds behind. how does this game go about their match making?
Your two ratings, Driver Rating (DR) and Sportsmanship Rating (SR) are the basis of the matchmaking. Your DR goes up and down depending on how well you do in a race relative to the other drivers' DR, and your SR goes up and down based on how cleanly you drive. If you make a lot of contact with people or get penalties, your SR will go down.
As far as I know the matchmaking is the same system as in GT Sport. If it is, the matchmaking goes by SR first. There's probably a mathematical/computery equivalent to compare this to but think of it this way. Out of all the people entering a race, it takes the SR first. All the people with maximum SR are grouped first, then they're split by DR. Say 100 people with max SR enter a race with 20 people in each. The first race would have the top 20 DR drivers, then the next would have 21-40 ranked, and so on. This is the same at other levels of SR, but once you get out of the maximum SR rank there's a much wider variation of DR on offer depending on what race you're in. You could have DR A in a race with DR C, and there would obviously be a big discrepancy in time.
If you're a brand new account with no races (GT7 carried over account ratings from GT Sport, meaning my DR A+ rating is currently in the process of going down the toilet) you start in DR E for five races, and with (I think) minimum SR. Once you do some races your ratings will settle down and you'll be matched against more people who are the same rating as you. If your SR isn't at max though you'll still run the risk of being in quite uneven lobbies, plus obviously the driving standards will probably be a lot lower. If it's the same system as GT Sport then a big drop in your SR can impact your DR too, so don't let that drop too far.
It's also worth pointing out that GT7 doesn't seem to allow third party websites to track stats (or make searching for liveries and decals much easier) the way GT Sport did, so you can only really go by the letter rankings which in themselves don't all mean the same thing. SR is ranked from 0-99, but although S goes as far down as 70-something, if your SR is below 91 then you won't be in the highest SR split. All of this is very clearly and logically explained in game, making Sport Mode really inviting and engaging for people new to it. Oh no wait that's not right.
The best advice I can give you is keep doing races and drive as cleanly as possible. By the time they've made Sport Mode at least as functional as GT Sport has been for years you should be in a good position to be competitive.
