Jordan Greer

Before the Gran Turismo Asia Championship 2012, the finalists were invited on a tour of Polyphony Digital’s new offices in Tokyo. A video which features some highlights of the event has been released, and contains a few interesting surprises.

Since the technology was first announced in January of 2010, Gran Turismo’s “Data Logger” has been mentioned a few times a year. As the first car to support it, the Toyota 86, makes its way into the world market, we’re finally learning a bit more about the product.

The latest round of Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, in the form of new Time & Drift Trials which feature the classic Honda S cars from the 1960s.

Ironically, England’s famous Silverstone Circuit has hosted every region’s GT Academy Race Camp every year since the competition began in 2008, yet has never actually been featured in a Gran Turismo game.

With so many locations from around the world featured in Gran Turismo 5, many fans have produced excellent videos and amazing photo libraries to see just how well the game represents reality.

Automotive news website PistonHeads had a brief chance to talk with Kazunori Yamauchi during his recent visit to the EU GT Academy 2012 finals.

For the past 8 weeks, special Seasonal Events have been held in Gran Turismo 5 for those who participated in GT Academy 2012 and won the in-game prizes offered by the competition.

The latest Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, featuring Lamborghini’s supercars in five A-Spec races. Cars are limited to a maximum of 550PP and Sports/Soft tires.

Last weekend was a busy one for Gran Turismo stars on real-world race tracks; in addition to Wolfgang Reip taking victory in the European GT Academy 2012, previous winners Lucas Ordoñez, Jordan Tresson, Bryan Heitkotter, and GT series creator Kazunori Yamauchi were also competing.

There’s just one more GT Academy 2012 champion waiting to be crowned, and the final Race Camp for the U.S. competition has just begun at Silverstone.

Last week, Kazunori Yamauchi joined the European GT Academy finalists at Race Camp and spoke with them, answering some of their questions.

The 2011 U.S. GT Academy champion, Bryan Heitkotter, is about to make his debut in the Pirelli World Challenge at Sonoma Raceway (formerly Infineon Raceway, as found in Gran Turismo 4).

This is it for the European GT Academy 2012 finalists; only six remain, one from each region of the competition. Their names are below, listed from left-to-right in order of the picture above.

The latest round of new GT5 Seasonal Events are now live; they’re available to players who achieved all Gold times on Round 7 of the GT Academy 2012 mini game and were awarded the Nissan GT-R Black Edition Tuned Car (GT Academy) ’12.

After the video update on the first two days of the European GT Academy 2012 Race Camp, the competition has intensified and eliminations have been handed down from the motorsports stars on the judging panel.

New Time & Drift Trials are now available in Gran Turismo 5’s Seasonal Events, featuring one of the game’s most popular driver’s cars, the Mazda Miata!

Owning a fresh new copy of GT5 is about to get even more affordable, with a new MSRP price reduction for Gran Turismo 5: XL Edition in the United States.

Each year at the prestigious Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, Kazunori Yamauchi personally selects a car at the show to be awarded the “Gran Turismo Trophy” and included in a future Gran Turismo title.

The European GT Academy 2012 Race Camp is well underway at Silverstone, and highlight videos are already being uploaded to YouTube! As always, there’s even more detailed coverage on GT Academy’s Facebook page.

Tuning – in the real or virtual world – can dramatically change a car’s performance and handling characteristics. It can also be very time consuming, involving hours of tweaking, testing, trial, and error.