This guest contribution is by Nick McMillen, 2013 United States GT Academy Champion. This is the account of his journey as one of the newest Nismo Athletes. Stay tuned for future articles from our racing driver contributor coming soon as he experiences and progresses through his professional career.

I’ve said it many times in the past and it bares being repeated: racing games have come quite a way and one of the more recent innovations is that of a photo mode where you can break free of the action on the track and attempt to tell a story by taking a picture. It is a feature that is legitimately addicting because there’s no restrictions on what one could do, you are free to tell your story and be as creative as need be, or you can simply catch that one moment during the race that made your jaw drop.

A new batch of seasonal events are now available in Gran Turismo 6, featuring the legendary Ferrari F40, non-race cars, tuned cars, and 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.

Volkswagen have just revealed a surprise teaser for what appears to be a second Vision Gran Turismo concept car from the company, following the Vision GTI concept launched last May.

It’s going to be addressed in full later on, but I’d like to remind all of you that the Member of the Week has not been discontinued in any form or fashion, it’s simply undergone a remodel of sorts, something you’ll be enlightened to a bit later on.

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

Renault has published a special creative video to celebrate their Alpine Vision Gran Turismo project car, which was released in last week’s GT6 update 1.17.

Just days after the official announcement that GT Academy is returning to Australia this year, more news of the program’s international expansion has landed. According to the latest post on Polyphony Digital’s PitStop blog, GT Academy will be coming to Japan – for the first time – later this year.

Nissan Australia has confirmed that GT Academy will be returning to the “Land Down Under” in 2015, and it’s set to receive some high-profile exposure with an accompanying livery set to run on Michael Caruso’s #23 Altima V8 Supercar during this weekend’s race in Launceston, Tasmania.

Thrustmaster has been aggressively expanding their sim-racing hardware line over the past year, first rolling out the new T300 RS wheel unit and then releasing updated shifter and pedal add-ons.

Shortly after the release of GT6 update 1.17, our forums exploded in a flurry of posts as our users realized that something had changed in relation to the transmission tuning options in the game.

The Community Spotlight has proven itself to be quite the undertaking these past several weeks, and it’s key that the community has its involvement, otherwise it’s simply me picking and choosing what I like and that’s not what this should be about. So I, T-12, need your help in making the Community Spotlight everything it should be. No, this isn’t an impromptu presidential campaign, and no I’m not pointing at my screen right now so you can stop looking around your room and scaring your loved ones.

A new batch of seasonal events are now available in Gran Turismo 6, featuring the SRT Viper, race cars, non-race cars, and “Gran Turismo Original” 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 latest Gran Turismo 6 update has just been pushed live, and – although it’s quite a bit smaller than the 1.16 update which introduced B-Spec mode and Midfield Raceway – it brings two highly anticipated Vision GT concepts: the Lexus LF-LC GT Vision Gran Turismo and the Alpine Vision Gran Turismo.

Polyphony Digital has posted a maintenance announcement for Wednesday, March 18th, starting at 04:00 GMT/UTC (click here to convert this to your local time zone) and lasting for approximately two hours. This does not guarantee a game update will be published, though these types of maintenance notices do typically precede their release.

An excellent 28-minute feature on 2014 North American GT Academy champion Nicolas Hammann was published on Hulu earlier today. It tells the story of Nic’s life: from his passion to cars and motorsport at a young age, to his involvement with Gran Turismo and the GT Academy program, to ultimately racing in the 24 Hours of Dubai last January.

The first images of Bertone’s Vision GT car have apparently been leaked, hitting the web thanks to a car design Facebook page. The renderings show what would be the most radical, over-the-top Vision GT projects to date, giving GM’s Chaparral 2X a run for its money.

It’s finally here, the weekend I’ve been looking forward to since the 24th of November last year, the 2015 Formula 1 season is upon us and I can only expect great things considering last season was nothing short of fantastic. How will Sebastian Vettel fair with Ferrari? Something tells me that Ferrari might be expecting the second coming of Michael Schumacher with the 4-time champion by their side. In response to this possibility, I’ll say now as I said then: if Fernando Alonso couldn’t pull it off then I don’t see Vettel being able to either.