That One Level / Gran Turismo

While Gran Turismo is fairly simple to pick up and play, the series is notorious for the Nintendo Hard events that come up every now and then in pretty much every single title.

Series-wide/multiple games

• The Nürburgring Nordschleife and Côte d'Azur (Monaco), both of which are the That One Tracks in real life.
• The Formula GT World Championship, about as close as 3 and 4 come to a Final Boss, pushes not only your driving and pitting skills to the limit, but also your tuning skills. Because there is no shop to sell extra parts for these cars (which precludes both out-powering them and beating them with tire choices and out-strategizing them, being stuck with Mediums) you have to really nail your Transmission, Downforce, and to a lesser extent Suspension tunings for you (and/or in 4 B-Spec Bob) to outdrive the opposition, which is easier said than done at this level. Thankfully, the championship is significantly neutered in 5, but it is still a pain to get through even there.
• Special Stage Route 11 in 1 and 3, which is quite tight and hard to maneuver through if you don't have a good handling car. Not to mention the original version's insane chicane on the back straight, and the fact that the IA-7 license test in 1 makes you do a full lap on the track with a TVR Griffith, which is not built to handle those very strict turns, and under a very tight time limit. Arguably, it's even more difficult in reverse, which thankfully you only ever have to do twice; unfortunately, it's in the Hard-Tuned Car Cup and All-Night 2, both of which ban Racing models.
• The endurance races in 4 and 5, especially in the latter as you can't B-Spec your way through them like in the former, though you can save the race progress in 5 to continue later. More for the tedium of driving for however many hours than for any actual difficulty, though.
• ...Like The Wind, an endurance race featured in every game from 3 through 6. What's wrong with a race that's all about going fast? Maybe because it's about holding your finger on the acceleration button for 40 minutes because it's a 20 lap race on Test Course. Even though there are no restrictions in terms of cars, nobody likes going flat out for that long. This can thankfully be (slightly) mitigated by periodically holding the right analog stick up.
  • Seriously, Test Course itself is just hated by fans in this game, not due to the track itself, but how it is implemented. In total, Test Course was used in 3's career mode ten times. How often was it used in that of 4? Only twice.
• The American Championship from 3 sometimes has a chance of pitting you up against the Chevrolet Corvette C5-R, a 600 HP race car that is among the fastest cars in the game, amongst a sea of 300-450 HP American sports cars. Good luck winning anything in this championship if you don't have another American race car, or a fully tuned Viper GTS or Corvette Z06. The American Championship in 4 continues the tradition, only now instead of the C5-R, there's a good chance the line-up will include the Chaparral 2J, a car that in real life was banned from motorsport because of just how unfair it was.
• The Historic Racing Car cup from both 5 and 6. Don't know what car you can get? Good luck racing against legends like the Chaparral 2J and the Toyota 7.

Gran Turismo 2

• The Historic Car Cup has one race in Rome that has been memetically mutated for being nigh-Unintentionally Unwinnable. The race has a limit of 295 horsepower, but there's a high chance for a Ford GT40 to appear in the race, ramping the difficulty up. You can't use a GT40 yourself due to the horsepower limit, and the car itself is a road version of the late '60s Le Mans championship winner. Due to the low horsepower requirement, you're forced to find a car that is agile, but not powerful, and if you're doing the races with the proper cars, the only effective choices are the Mini rally car (which costs 500 grand), the Lancia Stratos (a prize from the Apricot Hill 200km Endurance race), the Datsun 240Z, or the KPGC110 Skyline (both rare and expensive used cars that require a lot of money to make competitive against the GT40). Consider yourself lucky if another Stratos shows up instead of the GT40.
• The Epic Turismo 2 Game Mod features a race on Tahiti Maze, where you can get a bunch of Drip Kas (heavily modified Ford Kas with almost 1000 bhp of power) as opponents. Tahiti Maze is already one of the hardest tracks in the game, and there's a reason why it only hosted 1v1 races in the vanilla game. What's worse is that you can only use 4WD cars with 345hp or less unless if you use a GameShark code that allows you to enter any car in any event to enter either your own Drip Ka or the Escudo. Thankfully the 1.3 update was fixed and any car can be enter this even without resorting to gameshark codes.

Gran Turismo 3

• The Complex String track. It is 6.92 miles long and was seemingly designed as a test track for licenses and such, with almost every type of turn represented. The worst part of the course is the slalom section, which is a nightmare for racing machines, even the open-wheel F1-style racers. The time trial event on it made 100% completion very difficult indeed.
• The Professional All Japan Grand Touring Championship and Gran Turismo All Stars, due to a Guide Dang It!. The game gives zero warning that the cars that you will race against are tuned, and if yours isn't, you'll have your butt handed to you. You'll probably need to get a 787B to win, and you do it by racing...
• The A-7 License Test. Not only do you have to deal with the bumpiest part of Seattle Circuit, the Gold requirement is one of the most strict in the franchise; 14.2 seconds. In All Gold Licenses speedruns, this is usually a run ender for many.
• The S-6 License Test. You're in a Dodge Viper GTS-R at Laguna Seca, and you need to complete a lap in 82 seconds or less (78 seconds for a Silver, and 76 for Gold). The Viper's handling here takes quite a bit of getting used to.
• The Vitz Race in Professional Hall. Five ten-lap races, against infuriatingly brutal AI, in one of the slowest cars in the game, with one race being on the Test Course.

Gran Turismo 4

• The one lap guide runs in 4, while generally having generous gold times, are notoriously difficult because you have to keep up with the pace car without going too slow while also not accidentally overtaking the pace car that's very reluctant on using its power, or bumping it. It's not that difficult in earlier tests, but pretty soon you will be driving more powerful cars yourself. Special mention goes to IA-15, where you have to follow the pace car all the way throughout the Nürburgring Nordschleife in under 10 minutes (the gold time is 9:02.600 on the American version, 9 minutes flat on the European version) in the not-very-powerful-but-not-too-shabby-either Mercedes-Benz 190 E 2.5 - 16 Evolution II '91, which has enough power and grip to overtake the pace car in sharp corners and short straights.
• Mission 23 (the Nissan Skyline slipstream mission). The other slipstream missions have A.I. cars positioned at distances where you can slipstream and overtake them individually, but in this mission there are 4 A.I. R34 Skylines in a pack and the leader 11 seconds ahead of you. If you slipstream past the pack, you can't gain enough speed to catch the leader by the end. You'll need to work with the pack so you can gain and maintain enough speed to catch and overtake the leader by letting them slipstream and overtake you, leading to a game of high-speed leapfrog as they and you boost each other's speeds and exchange positions to catch the lead car, which you do towards the end of the last corner.
• Mission 34, the SLR McLaren race at the Nürburgring. There's a two-minute wait before you start. To explain why this mission is the reason why many players don't 100% the game, here's the scenario: You are given a Mercedes SLR which, according to the game, handles like a fish out of water. Any mistake will likely result in you spinning out and crashing. Then there's the track itself: It's the Nürburgring, the world's longest track, with difficult and twisty corners and a narrow and very bumpy surface, making it all too easy to lose control with any car. If you're lucky enough, it's possible to cut the corners near the Tiergarten stretch, ram the Mercedes 300SL "Gullwing" off the track, and get away with it with only a five-second penalty. It's so hard, it even underwent Memetic Mutation!
  • Check the OST; the name of the tune for the Mission Menu is Mission Impossible. They weren't kidding...
• The World Classic Car Series is either this or the easiest championship of the game. The game's strange grid generator can make you race against a bunch of weak old cars while you're using a classic muscle... or decide that it's fun to race against either the AC Cobra 427 S/C or the Buick Special (sometimes both). These are both classic cars with top speeds of over 280 kilometers per hour (174 mph) and brutal acceleration, only bested by Toyota 7 and Chaparral 2J (two CanAm racers from the same era, which are also eligible for the World Classic series). Depending on the car you're using, you can't win. Not at all. Not when 2 of the tracks you're racing have a monstrosity of a straight (Nordschleife and Fuji), and one can be considerably twisty (Côte d'Azur, even if you use the aforementioned Chaparral 2J that otherwise turns the World Classic into a complete joke).
• The Opel Speedster and Peugeot 206 one-make races. For some reason, in both events, the CPU cars are driving tuned Speedsters and 206s respectively. Unless you sink a few hundred thousand into your car and sit around tuning it for every bit of extra speed, you won't have a chance. Even then, good luck. Thankfully, you can buy the 206 Rally Car to breeze through the competition in the 206 one-make race. But in the Speedster one-make race where everyone is an SNK Boss, you'll have no luck even with a full-tuned Speedster.

Tourist Trophy

• The Yamaha TZ250 race in the Challenge Mode. While most other challenges in Challenge Mode are easy (barring One-Lap Time Trials), this one is the most threatening: you are pitted against two small but ridiculously fast Yamaha TZ250s on just two laps of Tsukuba Circuit, which is already frustratingly short. And you can only overtake one on each lap. Even if you're skilled, you may end up only overtaking one in entire race, thus you need to start over and over to win that bike. And you need to own that bike, as well as its smaller sibling, the TZ125 (that has the same yet easier challenge to obtain it, as you only race against one TZ125), for progression, since there are one-make events requiring those bikes. To compare, the TZ250 Challenge made Mission 34 in 4 look less intense, only rivaled by the Speedster event in that same game.
• Both the TT World Series and the Special Machine Festival put you in seven-to-ten-lap races, complete with the pits being made unavailable, and you are forced to use very hard tires to enter. Have fun!

Gran Turismo 5

• The Top Gear Test Track. The beginner special event has you racing (as the name implies, it isn't even meant to be raced on) in and against VW Sambabuses. The intermediate one replaces these with Lotus Elise 111Rs. But then the advanced version comes along and puts you in a WWII VW army vehicle with 15 opponents. Eight on each side of the track (counting you and Those Wacky Nazis). If you're not careful, you'll crash into one of the cars on the other side of the track passing through the intersection at the same time as you.
• A few of the earlier license tests in 5 are considerably more challenging than most of the later challenges. In particular challenges, B5-7 are incredibly difficult if you're going for Gold.

Gran Turismo 6

• The final event of the Goodwood Festival of Speed special events, 5-3, pits you in a Red Bull X2010. Just as if the original Vettel challenges in 5 were torture (especially if you don't have a steering wheel controller), 5-3 is even worse as the Hillclimb is extremely narrow, even in spite of the overwhelmingly generous Gold medal time.
• In 6, the Rainmasters Event in the IA license races. The game prohibits the use of 4WD vehicles in this event (which can handle rain really well and have a major advantage against non-4WD vehicles) and forces you to drive either an FR, MR, or RR vehicle, which significantly increases your car's tendency to oversteer (and thus making it very likely to fishtail, or spin out). The worst of this 3-race event is the Nürburgring 24HR course; the track is already extremely difficult to begin with (namely the Nordschleife), but the problems are compounded tenfold when racing in the rain, as it is horribly easy to lose traction thanks to the open sections of the track. You must have a combination of the right suspension tuning settings and really good handling skills to even make it to first place in this race. Then, to make matters worse, a high-powered hypercar (such as a Pagani Huayra) almost always starts in first place. You can turn on ASM (Active Stability Management), which really helps your car in the turns, especially in the rain, and makes it far easier, though you still have to keep sharp with your handling skills.
• An update brought the long-awaited Circuito de la Sierra, a long and twisty track in the winding roads of Spain. With it came the "Time Rally" challenges, which also added Timed Missions (and by extension, Stalked by the Bell) to the mix of the game's formula, making the mode akin to OutRun.
  
  The third challenge puts you in a Ferrari GTO. Being a mid-engined, rear-wheel-drive supercar (a departure from the front-wheel-drive hot hatches from the previous two challenges, an Abarth-tuned Fiat New 500 and Volkswagen Scirocco), the car is a complete monster to handle. If you try driving more slowly, you will only get less cars to overtake, and because overtaking opponents to raise your combos, score, and time limit is the key, you can't get the Gold if you don't get around enough of them. And there's the green Ford Shelby Mustang GT500, which can be hell to pass. You will usually linger around the driver of that Mustang until you get the lucky chance to get him.
  
  In the 1.14 update, a new challenge was added, this time using the 2014 Nissan GT-R NISMO, which is a four-wheel-drive car. Not that the car's drivetrain will help, because this challenge adds rain to the mix, specifically during the second to eighth sections, so that means worse grip and visibility. Also, AI car traffic is busier than ever, so prepare for "COMBO LOST!" and denial of 200,000 bonus points for a perfect run as you either get into an over-excited but poorly-coordinated overtake or crash into another car after a jump (usually a Mazda RX-7 FC or Ferrari F40).

Gran Turismo Sport

• Mission Challenge 8-6: Blue Moon Bay Speedway 15-Minute Endurance. It's a 15-minute race restricted to Gr.3 cars on the Pocono Raceway-esque Blue Moon Bay. It may sound easy enough on paper, but the problem is the AI in this race is absolutely relentless: they always take the optimal line through the three corners, and they will spin you out if given the chance. Another issue is that your car gets BoP'd, but the three cars that start out in front don't get BoP'd, meaning they'll be much quicker than you are at all times. A good strategy for this race is to bring out the Subaru WRX Gr.3 with Racing Softs on the front and Racing Mediums on the rear, and pit on either Lap 9 or 12 for tire change (preferably to Racing Mediums) and refueling, but even then, you'll most likely have to resort to cheap tricks if you want to win.
• In GT League, the La Festa Cavallino race at Monza. A Ferrari one-make event, this race will often have the 330 P4 in it, which opens up a large lead which you have to close in just six laps. Worse, you are limited to sport tires, and if you want your own P4, it'll cost you 20 million credits, when the fastest money-grinding outlet can only earn you around 1.5-1.8 million an hour. Even if you use a LaFerrari or 458 GT3 you may not catch up until near the end of the race.
• Yet again in GT League, the Goodwood Motor Speedway race in the Nostalgic Car Festival. It's pretty much a Call-Back to Gran Turismo 2's Historic Car Cup race on Rome, but even worse. There's a chance that the game will generate a Jaguar XJ13, a Le Mans racing machine from 1966, as an opponent. The car has 510 horsepower, and what makes this race even harder is the presence of joke cars as opponents that may hold you up and slow you down. Also, the Goodwood track, while being fairly short, is rather tight, so... good luck!
• New to Sport is the Circuit de Sainte-Croix, a fictional track in Southern France with three different layouts. All of them are pretty difficult, with multiple blind corners and misleading brake zones, and incredibly long. Layout A is almost six miles long, and features a highly technical first half featuring multiple 90-degree corners and a chicane right after the longest straight. Layout B is the shortest, with four and a half miles of length, and its fast, flowing sections still feature surprisingly difficult corners to navigate without ending up crashing into a wall. Finally, with over six miles, Layout C is the longest and hardest layout of the three, featuring flat-out straightaways punctuated with tight corners, as well as the first half of Layout A but in reverse.

Gran Turismo 7

• Out of all the license tests, IA-10 and S-10 are unanimously seen as the most difficult in the entire game.
  • IA-10 consists in driving through arguably the toughest section of the Nordschleife (from Hohe Acht to Eiskurve) at dusk in the Mercedes-AMG GT R. Not only, as already pointed out, you're going through the hardest section of the longest and hardest track in the game - full of blind corners interspersed by uphill and downhill sections - but you're doing so with low visibility on a car that's very finicky to control. The gold time is of 57.9 seconds, which is incredibly strict for the length of the section you have to traverse.
  • S-10 has quickly gained infamy as one of the most difficult license tests not just in the game, but in the entire series, joining the likes of S-6 from 3 and IA-15 from 4 in that regard. It entails a hot lap around Spa-Francorchamps after the rain in a 1970 Porsche 917K. Spa is already a challenging track on its own and the 917K takes a bit of time to get used to, but the real kicker is that only the part of the track where the racing line sits is fully dry. And no, your car doesn't have intermediate tires much less wet tyres, oh no, your 917K is equipped with Racing Hards - which are slick and are not meant to be driven on the wet. This effectively means that the moment you step on a wet portion of the track you are extremely likely to spin out, meaning you'll lose precious time at best or outright end up off course and fail the test at worst - the Eau Rouge, Pouhon/Double Gauche and Blanchimont corners are the worst offenders, especially Blanchimont as the apex of that corner is wet and is therefore much more difficult than normal to traverse at full speed. The gold time of 2:26 isn't terribly strict, but it's not generous in any way either.
• Almost all of the races in the Human Comedy mission set, while undeniably long and grueling, are perfectly doable by the average driver with the right car and setup. This however is all thrown out of the window with the final mission at Lake Maggiore - which has been hallowed as the hardest mission in the franchise, even beyond 4's infamous Mission 34: you are tasked to win a 1-hour race with BoP'd Gr.3 cars. However, the AI in this particular race is equal parts ferociously quick, consistent and cutthroat, making laps at around 1:58 (which is a really competitive time for Gr.3) almost all the time and also being more than happy to divebomb you in the turns, potentially causing you to spin out if you misjudge your space. And unlike the other BoP Gr.3 mission at Red Bull Ring, the opponents entirely avert Artificial Stupidity by only pitting when it is strictly necessary. Out of all the races in the game, this is the one where people actually recommend to do the Circuit Experience first; you just cannot possibly get gold in this race without knowing every single crevice of the track. Also, given this is a BoP race, you need to stick to a given setup: if you don't like how your go-to Gr.3 car handles, then tough luck.
• The update 1.11 introduced the notorious 12-lap event World Touring Car 600 set in Tokyo Expressway East Course which the prize for winning is 825,000 cr. This event was notorious for farming a lot of money especially when using the SRT Tomahawk X Vision Gran Turismo which was patched in the update 1.15 for being a total gamebreaker car and then returned in the update 1.21 but it patched back again in the next update so the player must resort in use of alternative cars like Alpine A220 Race Car, the Suzuki Escudo Pikes Peak or the Lancia Delta with GT-R Nismo engine. When this event made their debut, you could not get a Clean Race Bonus penalty when hitting walls or cars but you could still get a time penalty. Update 1.25 removed the penalties which could make farming way too easier but unfortunately in the 1.26 update it nerfed the update with hitting walls and cars and it became even worse in the 1.27 update where you can't even touch the slightest in the walls or the cars meaning that you can't even wallride in order to speed up the car or you can lose the Clean Race Bonus. The race is still easy to win if using a well-powered car, but when it comes to farming money it is incredibly difficult to make a perfect clean race meaning that most of time you can only win 550,000cr.

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