GT Academy officially kicks off today for players in its two newest territories, South Africa and the Middle East.

The Gran Turismo Awards have become a popular staple of SEMA 2012, the massive modified car show that takes place in Las Vegas each fall.

The latest round of Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, featuring suave French cars. Cars are limited to a maximum of 450PP and Sports/Hard tires or less. The challenges are as follows:

The published schedule is:

Many gamers have been reporting patchy online performance from Gran Turismo 5 in the last couple of days, with random disconnects from online lobbies and “Error Code: 268” when trying to join. There was even a succinct message added to the in-game news feed yesterday afternoon:

As announced last month, a new model of the Red Bull X2010 is being made available in Japan for the energy drink company’s “5G” Gaming Championship.

Gran Turismo 5: Academy Edition was launched to the public last week on September 26, and is apparently performing well in the UK market.

New Time & Drift Trials are now available in Gran Turismo 5‘s Seasonal Events, featuring one of the game’s most powerful race cars, the Formula Gran Turismo.

Polyphony Digital has announced they’ll be showing off a special version of Gran Turismo at Sony’s “Dramatic 4K Experience” in Japan.

As you may have heard, Sony announced the launch of their third – and likely final – revision to the PlayStation 3 hardware at the Tokyo Game Show a few weeks back.

Images courtesy of britishgt.com and fiawec.com.

The latest round of Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, featuring classic muscle cars built 1980 or earlier. Cars are limited to a maximum of 500PP and Sports/Medium tires or less. The challenges are as follows:

The latest round of new downloadable content is hitting PlayStation Stores worldwide, and players are finally getting their hands on the first entirely new car model to be released in GT5 since January, the Honda Weider HSV-010.

Gran Turismo 5 version 2.08 is now available as a 227MB download and brings with it a number of bug fixes and minor features.

A special competition is going to be held for Gran Turismo 5 players in Japan, as part of the larger “Red Bull 5G” gaming championship. The GT5 element kicks off with a Seasonal Event in the game on October 2, using a modified version of the Red Bull X2010.

AUTOart, the scale model company known for its detailed replicas, will be producing a 1:18 scale version of Gran Turismo 5’s Red Bull X2010, as announced by Polyphony Digital.

Just like GT Academy USA, GT Academy Germany‘s winner’s identity is being kept under wraps for the climax of a TV show – and hot on the heels of last week’s announcement by Spike TV of the US version’s show, GT Academy have announced the schedule for the German show.

As is usual for major game updates, Polyphony Digital released their official maintenance schedule for Gran Turismo 5’s online services next week.