On this Wednesday, January 29th, WRS Online will continue to support the online racing platform of GT6, hosting our first official weekly race event on GT6.  The Week 1 WRS Time Trial provides the platform for this race.  This exciting event features a car that’s brand new to the GT series, the Audi S1 quattro Pikes Peak Courtesy Car, on a returning favorite Original Circuit, Apricot Hill.  The races are open to anyone listed in the GTP_Registry.

Kazunori Yamauchi made a special appearance at the Taipei Game Show this weekend, and the first announcements are coming in from Taiwanese sites Gamerhotline and UDN (as kindly translated by our own Yui-san).

It appears things are slowly beginning to heat up if this past week’s festivities are any indication, we are quickly closing in on the final days of January and will soon be welcoming the 1st of February, which means an update is on the horizon. What next month’s update(s) will contain is anyone’s guess, but if you tuned in to the roundtable discussion earlier this week then you’ll know what’s been teased, and if you don’t know you’re in for quite the surprise so continue to read on.

If you had the chance to join us for yesterday’s live Gran Turismo roundtable discussion, you probably noticed a mysterious track was revealed in a new trailer for GT6 (thanks to ameer67 for grabbing these screenshots).

2011 US GT Academy winner Heitkotter is making his Daytona Speedway racing debut in support of the 2014 United SportsCar Championship Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona competing in the Continental Sports Car Challenge “Daytona Rising 200.” He will be piloting the Skullcandy Nissan Altima Coupe along with Vesko Kozarov in the Street Tuner (ST) category. Bryan’s last professional race was back in September when he ran a Nissan GT-R in the Pirelli World Challenge GT Class. He has achieved much success running in CTSCC previously with the Doran Racing 370Z, this will be the first race for him in the front-wheel drive Altima racecar.

The latest Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, featuring a series of two racing events exclusive to racing cars with no more than 530PP and no better than Racing/Hard compounds or less for this week’s time trial, and Dirt Tires for this week’s drift trial.

KAZ: Pushing the Virtual Divide is now available, premiering exclusively on streaming service Hulu (it will be widely released on Sony Movie Channel, Sony Entertainment Network, Amazon Instant Video, and Crackle starting February 5, 2014).

On Wednesday, January 22, 2014 at 6:00pm PST (click here to convert this to your local time zone), I will be hosting members of the Gran Turismo production team, 2013 GT Academy U.S. champion Nick McMillen, and KAZ director Tamir Moscovici, in a roundtable discussion streamed live on the official PlayStation Twitch.tv channel.

This guest contribution is by Nick McMillen, 2013 United States GT Academy Champion. This is his recount of his first major race and win, the 2014 24 Hours of Dubai, in his journey as one of the newest Nismo Athletes. Look out for future articles from our racing driver contributor coming soon as he experiences and takes steps through his professional career.

Everybody has opinions and ideas on what they’d like to see in a Gran Turismo game, but with thousands of messages posted in GTPlanet’s forums every day, it can be difficult to get a clear picture of what people are really asking for.

WRS Time Trials

For those of you unable to get to the events, there’s an active Twitter feed for the series along with live timing that includes support events.

Gran Turismo 6 continues to evolve and this past week’s 1.03 update is proof of that, adding in yet another new vehicle and breathing new life into the previous update’s newest addition, the BMW M4 Coupé by way of adding a fully-detailed interior. There’s no telling when the next major update will hit or what it will contain, but one thing is for certain: it won’t disappoint. With the remaining Red Bull X Challenge events due at the end of the month who’s to say we aren’t counting down to the next big thing?

SCEA has announced the release date for KAZ: Pushing the Virtual Divide, a documentary about the history of Gran Turismo and its creator, Kazunori Yamauchi. The film will be released on January 22, 2014 via web streaming service, Hulu.

The latest Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, featuring a series of five expert level racing events exclusive to British cars weighing 1200kg (2,645 lbs) with no more than 500PP and no better than Comfort/Soft compounds or less.

The latest Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 6, featuring three new time trial events exclusive to the Volkswagen Scirocco R, KTM X-Bow, and the Acura NSX.

The third update for Gran Turismo 6 is now available, and it brings with it the all-new Toyota FT-1 Concept Coupé, a full interior to the 2014 BMW M4 Coupé, new Seasonal Events, as well as amending the date of availability of the remaining Red Bull X Challenges which now reads “Available in January 2014”.

Toyota is kicking off the North American International Auto Show with the reveal of their latest flagship concept – the FT-1 Concept coupé.

Speedcafe published an article highlighting Nissan’s plans to open up GT Academy in Australia sometime within the next year and a half. In the article, Nissan Global Motorsport Director Darren Cox gave his take on bringing the program to the country: