As announced last month, 2012 GT Academy champion Jann Mardenborough was selected to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Lucas Ordoñez behind the wheel of Nissan’s radical new GT-R LM NISMO LMP1 car. Read below as Jann describes his thoughts and feelings after the announcement – and what it was like getting that call confirming he was selected for the program…

You can now view the week’s available Seasonal Event challenges and your ranking on the go from the official Gran Turismo website. You may recall this feature during the lifetime of Gran Turismo 5, allowing easy access to the week’s events without having to turn your console on.

This won’t be something I make mention of every week, but gracious me is looking through threads for hours on end not a task for the weary. You have informative threads, helpful threads, threads that encourage intellectual discussion, threads that cultivate constructive criticism, threads that—you get the point by now. There’s just so much to go through how can I possibly choose one over another without finding it absolutely necessary to group everything that I’ve looked at prior?

Darin Gangi of InsideSimRacing was one of the first to get his hands on the new MINI Clubman Vision GT just released in GT6 Update 1.16, and he’s made two videos highlighting the car. The first shows a complete lap of the new Midfield Raceway circuit (starting around the 4:30 mark), while the second shows a sub-7:00 lap of the Nordschleife.

After an exciting week of teasers, one of the more significant Gran Turismo 6 updates has finally been released: 1.16! Weighing in at 536MB, it includes one of the most-requested and beloved original tracks in the history of the franchise: Midfield Raceway. First introduced in GT2 and last seen in GT4, the track has received a complete refresh, with time-of-day and weather changes.

A new batch of seasonal events are now available in Gran Turismo 6, featuring beginner, intermediate, and expert level challenges including non-racing and racing cars alike. This week’s challenges are as follows – remember to stop by our GT6 Seasonal Events forum for more analysis, discussion, tips, and tricks!

Polyphony Digital has announced the online services for Gran Turismo 6 will be closed for approximately two hours on Thursday, February 26th, starting at 08:00 GMT/UTC (convert this to your local time here).

Another batch of teaser screenshots – this time from Polyphony’s site – show a few more details of the new MINI Clubman Vision GT car.

We first learned that GT6’s B-Spec mode was nearing release when some of Polyphony’s official European websites were updated with the first two in-game screenshots of the new driving mode. Today, we have even more information and screenshots thanks to a new article on the company’s Japanese blog.

Mini has released full design sketches for their “Clubman Vision Gran Turismo” concept car, after the first in-game GT6 screenshots were leaked early this morning.

Two images of a mysterious new Mini bearing the Gran Turismo 6 screenshot logo were obtained by GTPlanet earlier today, revealing some details of a car from the iconic manufacturer which don’t necessarily match those of any of their existing models.

UPDATE: These references to B-Spec have since been removed from the official site.

A classic Gran Turismo original circuit – Midfield Raceway – will be returning to the series in the next free GT6 update! First introduced more than 15 years ago in Gran Turismo 2, Midfield has not been seen since the release of Gran Turismo 4 back in 2004 (aside from an appearance in Gran Turismo PSP), and has never been seen on the PlayStation 3.

Shifters are sometimes forgotten in the sim racing hardware market today. Unlike the Logitech G25 and G27, which dominated the landscape in years’ past, few wheel sets include an independent shifter accessory nowadays, relying on paddles instead.

It’s not everyday you find yourself browsing countless threads, countless galleries, and a countless number of user posts looking for those that stimulate intelligent and thoughtful discussion, are helpful, and everyone walks away knowing more than they did beforehand. It’s no easy task looking for members that present themselves in such a fashion to the community at large that they stand out among that same community – and there’s where this new feature comes in. Someone has to make sure some of the very best that GTPlanet has to offer is highlighted in a consistent and well laid-out fashion.

Nissan Motorsports announced today a partnership with Always Evolving (AE) to campaign two GT Academy-NISMO Nissan GT-R GT3 racing cars for the 2015 Pirelli World Challenge season.

A new batch of seasonal events are now available in Gran Turismo 6, featuring your choice of non-racing cars, 2-wheel drive racing cars, and 4WD non-race cars. This week’s challenges are as follows, and remember to stop by our GT6 Seasonal Events forum for in-depth analysis and discussion, and tips and tricks.

The Thrustmaster T300RS wheel is a great piece of hardware, but as I noted in my review last week, the pedals it comes with can leave you wanting a bit more – and they don’t include a clutch. That’s where the T3PA pedal set comes in, providing a plug-and-play upgrade that’s compatible with the rest of the company’s ecosystem of wheels.

The Vision GT project – which invites the world’s automotive companies to design their version of the “ultimate” Gran Turismo car – has given us some fairly incredible concepts, but the designers are rarely bold enough to show off designs that were left on the cutting room floor.