GT Racing: Motor Academy from Gameloft distances itself from the arcade racing of their Asphalt series of games and enters GT territory dominated by Firemint’s Real Racing and EA’s recent Need for Speed Shift. One might question weather another GT racer is needed but the market for racing games seems endless and Motor Academy offers some outstanding features not found in the other top racers.

GT Racing provides a fantastic replay after each race with multiple camera angles and views that really captures the excitement of the race and your driving skills or lack thereof. This adds a lot to GT Racing as you can sit back, relax and see where you may of lost speed or made a nice move. It wouldn’t mean much unless there weren't excellent driving controls and Motor Academy offers every conceivable control option and driving aid known to let you tailor the game precisely to your individual style and let you race well.  You can even adjust the center of mass, downforce control and brake bias of your vehicle in the tuning menu if you like.  The overall game physics are terrific as you can feel how every road surface, weather effect and tweak in your controls effects the handling of your car.

The 14 well-designed tracks are plentiful and offer great variety with city courses and country, on-road and off, banked speed rings and narrow city streets. Unlike Real Racing and NFS Shift these aren’t all flat tracks. It feels more like real world driving with a lot of uphill climbs and tricky downhill turns. There are over 100 licensed cars to drive with branded in-cockpit views from each manufacturer and different physics for each vehicle. There are also drag races and truck racing.

The graphics are excellent, in the same league as Real Racing and better than NFS Shift. Although NFS’s car modeling may be a bit sharper and glossier. The only real negative with GT Racing’s graphics is that there is pop-up in some of the buildings on the city courses, most notable in Sydney, and more annoyingly cars at a long distance tend to pop in and out of view when chasing them down. These are minor road bumps in an otherwise beautiful and smooth running racer.

The career mode is long and challenging. You must first earn licenses in 4 categories before you can race that class and each class has a series of 4 or 5 cups with 2-4 races each in which you must finish in the top 3 to advance. Then there are constructor events in which you must own a particular type of car, driver contract events where you’re contracted by a manufacturer to race their vehicle and special invitation events. Finishing first in some events rewards you with a nice bonus car!  If you don’t want to race for cash in order to purchase cars and upgrades for your career, there’s an arcade mode where you can run single races on any course and try most of the cars. Finally, there’s multiplayer both local and online through Gameloft live.  Currently there is a short wait to join a race and people tend to pause or drop out.

GT Racing gives you a lot of racing bang for the buck with a great look, challenging racing, spot-on physics and Gameloft’s usual stellar presentation.  It's the most comprehensive, fully featured and realistic GT racing simulation on the Iphone and gets 4 ½ stars while lapping NFSS and nudging out Real Racing on my overcrowded hard drive.  While it may not have the big name of other racing franchises, it's got the game.