Peter Lyon, a MotorTrend editor who will be joining teammate Kazunori Yamauchi for this weekend’s 24 Hours Nurburgring race, was first to try out the latest demo including the Nurburgring GP circuit and described it as “simply stunning”. His most notable observation, though, was that of a new penalty system:

The Nurburgring GP Course has just been confirmed for Gran Turismo 5 in a German press release! All three configurations of the track (Nordschleife, GP, and the full VLN Circuit) will be available. Better yet, we’ve got beautiful new screenshots of the new circuit, showing a lot of trackside details have been included and updated. We first picked up on the possibility of the circuit coming to GT5 when its grandstands were visible in this GT PSP trailer, and fortunately it looks like that turned out to be an actual clue. Keep reading for the translated press release and new images. Thanks to Stefan1904 for the tip!

Things are pretty quiet as we wait for E3. Thankfully, to keep things interesting, our old friend mimaximax is back in action and has delivered a fresh video clip. This time, though, instead of his notoriously funky tunes, we actually get to hear the in-game sounds. According to the description, the video was recorded “from a 1080p Bravia screen (KDL-40X2000), in 1080i using a tripod, a Canon Legria HF200 and a Zoom H2 recorder”. Enjoy!

GTPlanet’s own Maziar Shahsafdari (Synwraith) joined RJN Motorsports last weekend for their first race of the season, and he’s come away with a new appreciation for GT Academy winners Jordan Tresson and Lucas Ordoñez. His close contact with everyone in the team has provided an inside look at who these guys really are, and explains how their mental toughness sets them apart from the rest of us. It’s a great read, and I guarantee you’ll come away from the article with a new perspective on the GT Academy program and the driving talent it has discovered so far. Click here to check it out, and be sure to leave a word of thanks to Maziar for all of his hard work in putting this together (thanks again, Maz!)! I’d also like GTP reader Casey for sharing the following pictures from last weekend’s race:

As if you needed any more reasons to get excited about the possibilities in GT5‘s Photomode, here’s two sharp new images of the SLS AMG on the Nurburgring.They’ve been released on the announcement that the SLS AMG/Nurburgring demo, which has been featured at the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart, will soon be playable at Mercedes dealers across Europe. So, if you’ve got a dealership close by, be sure and keep an eye out for it.

In what is presumably the last of Kazunori Yamauchi’s round of interviews to emerge from his time at Snetterton, he’s made a comment regarding the development status of the big game:

The 2010 racing season is kicking off around the world, and GTPlanet is proud to support the first GT Academy winner Lucas Ordoñez in this year’s GT4 European Cup and TKi Motorsport, competing in the NASA Pro Racing Northeast Series here in the United States. Both are off to a great start, with TKi having scored a podium finish in their first race. I’ll be sharing occasional updates about their progress, or you can easily monitor their updates with Facebook or Twitter at the links below. Good luck, guys!

In an interview with Japanese show “Love Cars!”, Yamauchi hinted at updates to GT5’s damage modeling:

We know the GT Academy 2010 Silverstone finals were intense, but what was it really like? For those of us who couldn’t make it (or were geographically excluded from the competition…), here’s the complete experience on video, showing what the competitors went through during each day of the finals. Watch all of the clips below, and don’t forget to check out video from the first GT Academy finals as well!

You can put any doubts you had about Gran Turismo 5’s 3D support to rest. Taku Imasaki, a U.S. based producer for the game, confirmed that it will feature this new technology.

During his time at Snetterton to watch the two GT Academy 2010 finalists compete for the top spot, Kazunori Yamauchi talked with quite a few journalists. His last interview to be published is with BBC’s TopGear. As you would expect, there aren’t any bombshells, but here’s the most notable quotes:

Jordan Tresson has been announced as the winner of GT Academy 2010. The 21-year-old Frenchman completed a short head-to-head test today on Silverstone’s new Grand Prix circuit against friend and rival Luca Lorenzini. The pair drove five flying laps each in the 420bhp Nissan 370Z GT4 race car that Tresson will now campaign in the 2010 European GT Cup series.

One of the more unpleasant surprises we’ve had waiting for Gran Turismo 5 was the unexpected postponement of the game’s March 2010 Japanese release. It was a quiet announcement, but set a somber tone at the beginning of the year for us eager fans. Since that time, we have not received any sort of information on exactly why that happened – until now. In an excellent interviewwith Dean Gibson of AutoExpress last weekend, Yamauchi-san clarified things a little bit:

Kazunori Yamauchi was (and actually still is, thanks to Iceland’s volcano) in the UK this past weekend to meet with the GT Academy 2010 winners at Snetterton. That went well, but the first interview to emerge from his visit (which appears to have been removed from AutoBlog UK) has already caused a great deal of teeth-grinding in our forums. Here’s the problem:

Remember JR Rocha‘s heavily modified Infiniti G37, which won immortality in the GT Awards at SEMA 2008? We got to see a few high-res screenshots of the car at last year’s show, but now here it is in action around the Nurburgring in one of mimaximax’s latest videos. It looks a bit odd to see a car like this on the Green Hell, but I’m sure this clip would bring a smile to the face of its late owner.

CVG has the scoop on an interesting quote Yamauchi made while talking to their sister magazine, PSM3:

In one of mimaximax’s recent videos, he (attempts) to show damage on the Nissan Motul GT-R. Unfortunately, despite the fact that it’s a race car, it doesn’t show anything more than a few scratches in this old demo that he’s using. While trying to damage the car, though, he inadvertently forces an AI-controlled Castrol Supra into a last-second avoidance maneuver. For a game which has long been criticized for its artificial intelligence, this is a positive step forward. Watch for the incident shortly after 2:15 in the video below. Thanks to TorqueHappenS08 for the tip!

If you’re reading this site, you probably know Gran Turismo 5 is a big deal for the PlayStation brand, but we can’t often quantify that into numbers. Data collected by marketing research agency OTX GamePlan, however, gives a peek into stats you know Sony is taking into careful consideration. According to their latest survey, 33% of people who plan on purchasing GT5 don’t yet own a PlayStation 3 console to play it on. In other words, if GT5 sells anywhere close to GT4’s 10.9 million copies, there will have to be several million consoles out the door along with it. For a system that sells around 10 million units per year, that would be healthy increase. Without a solid release date for the game, though, those consoles could be sitting on the shelf for a while…

Taking a break from the Nordschleife, Mimaximax’s latest videos show off two of Gran Turismo 5’s most exciting new cars: the Ferrari Enzo and Lamborghini Gallardo LP-560-4 at Indianapolis. Enjoy!

The latest videos from Mimaximax have taken an interesting turn over the past few days, as he begins to feature some of the more unusual and exotic cars found in the demo. Most notably, we get to see the highly-anticipated McLaren F1 in action on the Nurburgring, along with a race-prepped TVR Tuscan Speed 6. He’s even thrown in footage of a Mercedes SLR and in-car replay from a Nissan GTR V-Spec for good measure!