Sony has released a batch of pictures from last week’s GT Academy 2011 Netherlands region finals, where 24-year-old Thomas Arends (Thomms) from The Hague and 20-year-old Edwin Bos (GTHQ_BosjesmanEB) from Groningen came out on top after completing a series of physical, media, and driving tests (just as finalists did in the UK & Ireland).

It looks like the long wait is nearly over – Sony will begin restoring PlayStation Network services around the world over the next 24 hours. A new PS3 firmware update is already available and will be required to connect to the network when it finally does come back online in your location (SCEA is maintaing a service map for U.S. users here). Everyone will, of course, be prompted to change their PSN passwords upon signing in. Watch the video above from Sony president Kazuo Hirai for more information.

As you’ve probably noticed, it’s been nearly seven days now since Sony last offered up a “this week” time frame for the restoration of PlayStation Network services. While there’s still no real end to the downtime in sight, Sony has at least acknowledged they’re probably going to miss that soft deadline with their latest blog post:

Sony held a press conference in Tokyo today to provide more details about the PlayStation Network outage and their plans moving forward. There’s a lot of information of in the press release below, but the best news – for those of you eager to back online with GT5, at least – is they expect online gaming services to return “this week”.

You think you know a lot about the Gran Turismo series? This jaw-dropping collection of GT games and memorabilia collected by GTPlanet’s own edward_v12 will educate even the most hard-core fans.

Before you ask in the comments below, no – the PlayStation Network isn’t back up yet (not as of writing, at least). While you wait, check out this slick video tour of Gran Turismo 5’s real-world Tokyo R246 circuit, put together by Caterham Japan to feature their Superlight R300. For comparison, here’s a lap of the track in GT5:

What started as downtime in the PlayStation Network last Thursday has gradually snowballed into a very serious problem for gamers. The inability to connect to PSN has rendered Gran Turismo 5’s online features and races useless, with angst is growing in our forums and around the world.

This interview conducted with Kazunori Yamauchi shortly after the release of Gran Turismo 5 has been flying under the radar since it was published back in February. It was just recently brought to my attention and, though there’s obviously no bombshells, it provides a few interesting details worth highlighting here:

Winner of the first GT Academy “Wild Card” was just announced last week, and I’m very happy to report the award goes to GTPlanet’s own James Hudson. Hudson, who goes by TwinturboCH here in our forums, has now become the very first confirmed national finalist in all of Europe. The second UK “Wild Card”, of course, is still up for grabs in the GT5 time trials currently underway at GAME retailers around the country.