By announcing two new DLC packs, of which one is certainly going to boil the blood of rallying enthusiasts, Sébastien Loeb Rally EVO is putting up a good fight to remain competitive alongside DiRT Rally.

Looking at my in-game statistics for Driveclub, you’d be forgiven for thinking I’m a superfan of the title. Maxed out XP, all Elite levels achieved, platinum trophies for both vanilla DC and the Bikes expansion plus more accolades than a war veteran. There’s no doubt whatsoever – no current generation game has even came close to the time I have played Evolution Studios’ middling racer (outside of a certain kart racer). I’ve raced in over 2,000 events, earning every single star.

Silicon giant NVIDIA Corporation have revealed that their concerted efforts of developing self-driving cars has been aided by ‘The Real Driving Simulator’ itself, Gran Turismo.

Derek Speare Designs is one of the sonorous brands of the sim-racing components market. It crafted its popularity by producing various button boxes, pedals, shifters and other accessories of high quality. It seems that the company has no intentions of resting on its laurels, as DSD recently revealed components for what appears to be a new rig for eager driving enthusiasts.

Koenigsegg made waves last year at Geneva with the Regera. Billed as the “more luxurious” relation in the Koenigsegg family, the car had all sorts of impressive bullet-points. 1500 horsepower! Three electric motors! A single gear!

A sentimental longing for the past; for a period or place with happy personal associations. That’s the definition of nostalgia, and the reason this is both the prelude and underlying theme this week has to do specifically with nostalgia playing such a significant role among those of us here at GTPlanet.

Hardcore driving enthusiasts should be able to tell how comfortable a good rig must be to push the thrill of virtual driving to higher level. rSeat is responding to the market by releasing the newest N1 rig hardware.

Death Valley isn’t the most popular environment amongst the track-making community. The unforgiving track barriers don’t help, and the desert setting doesn’t offer the elevation changes that Eifel and Andalusia can. But climbing and diving alone don’t make a track great: look at Sebring (our first TOTW recepient, actually). For the 19th week of this feature, we’ve got a relatively flat Death Valley track that nonetheless offers up plenty of fast-paced racing under the sun’s glare: Desert Valley Raceway.

Alpine showed off the latest iteration of their planned return to road car production yesterday in Monaco. Starting with the A110-50 concept of 2012, followed by a certain Vision Gran Turismo creation last year, and the Alpine Celebration model later in 2015, we’ve now landed at the rather confusingly-titled Alpine Vision.

Forza, along with other first-tier exclusives like Halo and Gears of War in the Microsoft camp, is considered a “system-seller”. Sony has Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, and of course, Gran Turismo. These games help move hardware: it’s no coincidence that the highest-selling title in Gran Turismo history (GT3) was bundled with the best-selling home console.

The Swedish gaming studio Sector3 Studios (formerly SimBin) is known for pushing the hard-core driving simulation genre back to the surface at a time when it was more or less apparent that the market was oriented towards casual driving games. This movement caused major changes in the way driving games are developed nowadays and we’re all thankful for that.

I’ll be honest, originally, the title was going to be “Everybody Wants to Rule the World of Racing Games” but I changed it, obviously. Why? One, it’s a little long-winded. Two, it would almost certainly conjure up thoughts of Tears for Fears, at least among those old enough or even savvy enough to know who they are.

With new DLC incoming, it was only a matter of time before Slightly Mad Studio’s Project CARS received another nip and tuck. As with the previous update, the new 9.0 patch for the title is aimed at PC copies of the driving simulator first. Among other things, the patch recalls several vehicles for a few technical adjustments, of which we highlight the one that focuses on the recent Ford Falcon V8 Supercar and its exhaust sound. All fixes brought by the update are listed below:

Driveclub’s community team promised us February would be a cracker for the Playstation exclusive and they weren’t lying… this update, due to go live today, is bound to please fans and tempt potential purchasers alike.

A fresh batch of seasonal events are now available in Gran Turismo 6. This week’s events are a trio of challenge events featuring the familiar non-race car and race car fare.

Remember Nimble Beat Circuit? That Week 16 selection kicked off a renewed interest in smaller tracks here in the office, and the cars that feel at home on them. There’s something immensely satisfying about the speed-conservation approach little cars offer, knowing that any velocity scrubbed away will be all the more difficult to recover from. Smörgåsbord is just that sort of circuit, and its my selection for this week’s Track of the Week.

Another month, another pack of cars to look forward to in Project CARS. After last month’s StanceWorks Track Expansion introduced a new environment and an insane drift car to tame, Slightly Mad is continuing their pattern of following up with a straight-forward cars-only DLC. Judging by recent teasers, this will be quite the popular pack.

With rumours swirling earlier this month, Wolfgang Reip has now confirmed the bad news (care of Daily Sports Car): Nissan has chosen not to renew his contract for the 2016 season.

Australia’s prime racing circuit hosted an absolute thriller over the weekend which saw Tekno McLaren take the title, despite harsh competition from defending champions Nissan and a few issues faced along the half-day event. The driver team of Shane Van Gisbergen, Alvaro Parente and Jonathon Webb faced a car break-down and drive-through penalty, which threatened their chances of domination by pushing them down to 3rd in the closing stages of the endurance race.

Development on the critically-acclaimed Assetto Corsa began in 2011, and since then the game has received numerous updates. The latest of which having introduced several new vehicles, the introduction of “the best circuit in the world,” Brands Hatch, as well as updates to some of the core features of the game. But if there’s one thing that’s been noticeable despite all of the updates, it’s the quality of the tracks.