Can home entertainment provide a decent groundwork for a professionally-oriented job of the same genre? As far as video games are concerned we suppose it could, given how modern driving simulators are nowadays being extensively used by racing drivers around the globe. How else can you conveniently polish your skills without having to carry out expensive tests in the actual car?

Senna TV, a channel dedicated to all things Ayrton-related, was in Japan recently to interview Polyphony head Kazunori Yamauchi. While talk naturally revolves around the legendary F1 driver, eagle-eyed Gran Turismo fans are treated to a few brief glimpses into Gran Turismo Sport, including our first look at future hardware in action.

Turn 10 Studios has kept up a long-standing tradition of inviting fans to guess the contents of its downloadable car packs, and that ritual continues ahead of November’s Forza Horizon 3 update.

After a successful inaugural season, Turn 10 have revealed that the Forza Racing Championship eSports competition is returning for a second season, set to kick off on November 7. With the event being sponsored by Michelin, Logitech G and Playseat, players will ultimately go at it for cash and prizes worth more than $150,000.

Today seems to be full of surprises. The unusual Porsche avatars on Xbox are one thing, but a free edition of an existing game is something different altogether. Hot on the heels of the news that the game has sold two million copies, Project CARS – Pagani Edition launches today, exclusively on Steam.

It was well over a year ago when GTPlanet reported on rumblings that Electronic Arts’ exclusive licensing agreement with German automaker Porsche was set to expire sometime in 2016.

With many details still being kept in the dark regarding Gran Turismo Sport, the full car and track roster expected in-game remains a mystery. Since the original info blowout at the Copper Box event in May, there have been occasional car reveals (Hyundai Genesis Gr. 3, Kazunori’s own BMW M6 GT3) and a single new track shown off (Fishermans Ranch). In terms of official announcements, Polyphony has remained silent on that front since the game’s delay to sometime in 2017.

Paris Games Week 2016 got underway yesterday. For Gran Turismo fans, the event holds significance, for it was at last year’s expo that the latest chapter in Polyphony’s racing franchise was first introduced. With 366 days since that initial reveal, we’re looking back to get an idea of what’s changed since then, and — thanks to a delay pushing the title into 2017 — where GT Sport is heading.

It’s hard to believe, but SEMA has been holding the ceremony of the annual “Gran Turismo Awards” for more than a decade now. What car is going to claim the “Best in Show” at the largest automotive exhibition in Las Vegas this year? We’re going to find out next week — Wednesday, to be precise — when the 14th iteration takes place in Sin City.

It’s been an arduous week, but it all came to a head earlier today at the 2016 GT Academy International Race Camp. With a two drivers from each region remaining, the last event would see all six teams battling it out on track in identically-prepped 370Z race cars. In the end, it would be Johnny Guindi Hamui, a student from Mexico, that would be crowned champion, but not without a fight.

The men and women over at Slightly Mad Studios had cause for celebration this week, as their 2015 multi-platform sim racer hit another sales threshold. Project CARS first crossed the seven-figure mark shortly after launch in June 2015, and has now doubled that amount to two million.

It’s all been building to this. Today will see one person crowned the 2016 GT Academy International champion, beginning their path to becoming a race car driver as part of the Nissan Driver Development Program. Less than three months later, the winner will be making their competitive debut alongside Jann Mardenborough at the 2017 24 Hours of Dubai in January. You can watch it all unfold above, starting at 14:00 Silverstone time (click here to convert).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXqYs0xOV6Q

After months of teasing, Porsche Pack 1 is now available to PC players for Assetto Corsa. A bombshell announcement made earlier this year, the inaugural car pack pays tribute to the German marque, promising to deliver “the best Porsche experience ever.”

Due to the exciting conclusion of the 2016 All-Japan Formula 3 series, we’ve barely been able to keep up with the other racing activities the ever-busy Jann Mardenborough has been involved with. The talented GT Academy wasted no time in adding more silverware to his shelf, this time in the familiar silhouette of the Nissan GT-R: alongside co-driver Kazuki Hoshino, Jann helped put the B-Max NDDP car on the podium in the GT300 class. This is the second podium placement for the team since they snatched the gold at the 500km Fuji endurance event last May.

With Porsche Pack Volume 1 set to touch down tomorrow, Kunos Simulazioni have hinted that a slow trickle of information regarding the contents of Volumes 2 & 3 will arrive in due time. It appears Steam hasn’t received the memo though, and have revealed everything in one fell swoop on their database page.

It has been five years since Microsoft’s Turn 10 Studios and previous Halo developer Bungie teamed up to bring the M12 Force Application Vehicle to Forza Motorsport 4. Now, the battletested four-wheeler from the future returns to the home front for a more racy cameo in Forza Horizon 3.

We’re only hours away from the first seven Porsches arriving in players’ hands in Assetto Corsa. As detailed last week, PC players will be getting the first crack at the Stuttgart manufacturer, with PS4 and XB1 owners slated to receive Porsche Pack Volume 1 in November.

Over the course of the past few months, the qualifying rounds of GT Academy 2016 have quietly taken place across the globe, as thousands of potential competitors took their best shots using a pre-release version of GT Sport. Six regions were earmarked for International Race Camp (Australia, Indonesia, Mexico, North Africa, Philippines, and Thailand), and after all the dust had settled, six finalists were selected from each to represent their team in Silverstone.

Almost every game has secrets, and the Gran Turismo series is no exception. What hides beneath vast lines of programming code — never meant to see the light of day — can be a veritable goldmine for players vigilant enough to dig them up. Back in the spring of this year, we shared videos of the secret stunt tracks found in GT6, and today we’re switching to the classic Gran Turismo 4 on PS2.