Esports

As reported earlier in the month, 2009 GT Academy champion and LMP2 racer Lucas Ordonez has joined the RJN Motorsport Blancpain Endurance team for the Spa 24 Hours this weekend.

A new bundle version of GT5 has been announced this lunchtime for Europeans – the Academy Edition, to celebrate the fourth year of the Sony/Nissan tie-in of GT Academy.

Although Gran Turismo players from Asia didn’t have the chance to become a racing driver, the top players in the region still have an interesting prize to look forward to.

If you thought the 33rd “Racer X” wildcard position brought a dramatic twist to the U.S. GT Academy finals in San Diego last weekend, you’ll be very surprised to find out what the competitors in Portugal had to contend with!

Six UK and Republic of Ireland players have booked their places for a Silverstone return at next month’s Boot Camp, following two days of gruelling virtual and real driving and fitness challenges.

As those of you who tuned in to the live stream already know, the top 16 finalists in the U.S. region of GT Academy 2012 were determined this weekend in a dramatic event held in San Diego, California during Comic-Con.

After eight long weeks of online time trials held in the GT Academy 2012 mini-game, the top 33 Gran Turismo players in the United States have earned their place in the National Finals.

A series of special new Seasonal Events have just been announced for Gran Turismo 5, which feature the prize cars earned in the GT Academy 2012 mini-game.

The one and only U.S. GT Academy 2012 wildcard event is taking place today, Thursday, July 12, in San Diego, California! The winner, who will be known as “Racer X”, will take home the custom HumanRacing GT Chassis pictured above and join the top 32 U.S. contestants in the finals this weekend for a chance to go to Silverstone.

The top 32 drivers from Spain met last weekend in Barcelona for their regional GT Academy 2012 finals.

Yesterday, the first prize (a Nissan Leaf) earned by participants in the GT Academy 2012 mini-game was distributed to players in Gran Turismo 5, but it wasn’t yet clear when the others would become available.

If you achieved “Gold” times in the GT Academy 2012 mini-game, your efforts are about to be rewarded! Prizes earned in the competition’s time trials are now being distributed to players in Gran Turismo 5.

As announced by Nissan earlier this week GT Academy’s first winner, Lucas Ordoñez, will be reunited with his Le Mans teammates Martin and Alex Brundle. The trio will be driving the Greaves Motorsport Zytek-Nissan for the next round of the FIA World Endurance Championship at Silverstone on 26th August.

Kazunori Yamauchi will be attending GameLab 2012, a video game developer’s conference to be held this weekend in Barcelona, Spain. He will be receiving an Honor Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and will be delivering a speech on the Gran Turismo series and GT Academy.

As was discussed in our forums, registration pages for GT Academy 2012 experienced some technical difficulties last weekend in the final days of the competition. This prevented some participants from completing their registration, which would make them ineligible to move forward in the competition.

Lots of new information has just been published on the PlayStation Blog which outlines everything that’s about to go down at the U.S. GT Academy 2012 finals, which will be held alongside Comic-Con next month in San Diego, California.

On the day GT Academy 2012 drew to a close the most recent graduate, Jann Mardenborough, showed the participants what it’s all about by taking a maiden win at the British GT series for RJN Motorsport – 365 days after he won Sony’s competition.

As the 2012 GT Academy qualifier draws to a close, the most recent graduates are in action again on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

We’re closing in on the final hours of GT Academy 2012, the most intense and competitive time of the public contest.

https://youtu.be/lgIV_nSqfD4