head to head
TrackMania Nations asks more than Gran Turismo 2, and the gap is execution.

Execution · Practiced Mastery
The PS1 driving opus where picking and tuning the right car for each event matters as much as driving it.

Execution · Pure Mechanics
Shaving hundredths off deterministic tracks through near-perfect repeated inputs.
Gran Turismo 2 leans Execution (Practiced Mastery); TrackMania Nations leans Execution (Pure Mechanics).
TrackMania Nations leans clearly harder on execution.
Gran Turismo 2
Clean braking and lines matter, aided by forgiving AI.
TrackMania Nations
Hundredths-perfect inputs on fixed tracks are the entire game
Same score on reads - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Gran Turismo 2
Rolling-start AI follows fixed pace scripts.
TrackMania Nations
Ghost racing; rivals cannot affect your run
Gran Turismo 2 leans a little harder on variance, though the gap is small.
Gran Turismo 2
Used car lot rotation is minor randomness.
TrackMania Nations
Deterministic physics, identical track every attempt
Gran Turismo 2 leans a little harder on optimization, though the gap is small.
Gran Turismo 2
Car selection, tuning and prize-money routing dominate the career.
TrackMania Nations
Discovering the theoretical ideal line is a solvable problem
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.