Except he never stated your take either. Nothing about advancement was mentioned.
Advancement doesn't need to be expressly stated because GT7 is the second GT game released after Forza 7. GT sport was released shortly after Forza 7 and was seen as a peer/competitor. The only people who need this explained to them probably don't actually care about Forza or GT.
It's also super odd to see the doting on GT7 considering it's a step back in many ways from both GT sport in terms of possible events and GT6 in terms of career. If anything the series has seriously stagnated in terms of AI which is why basically every race is a rolling start since GT5. People also gloss over the backlash of the MTX being revealed after reviewers too. DR/SR is the only real recent innovation to the series. SR is a game changer that solves shitty online driving for the most part. Even then, GT just cribbed it from iRacing which had both SR and DR for a decade before sport.