On Wednesday, January 22, 2014 at 6:00pm PST (click here to convert this to your local time zone), I will be hosting members of the Gran Turismo production team, 2013 GT Academy U.S. champion Nick McMillen, and KAZ director Tamir Moscovici, in a roundtable discussion streamed live on the official PlayStation Twitch.tv channel.

This guest contribution is by Nick McMillen, 2013 United States GT Academy Champion. This is his recount of his first major race and win, the 2014 24 Hours of Dubai, in his journey as one of the newest Nismo Athletes. Look out for future articles from our racing driver contributor coming soon as he experiences and takes steps through his professional career.

Everybody has opinions and ideas on what they’d like to see in a Gran Turismo game, but with thousands of messages posted in GTPlanet’s forums every day, it can be difficult to get a clear picture of what people are really asking for.

WRS Time Trials

For those of you unable to get to the events, there’s an active Twitter feed for the series along with live timing that includes support events.

Gran Turismo 6 continues to evolve and this past week’s 1.03 update is proof of that, adding in yet another new vehicle and breathing new life into the previous update’s newest addition, the BMW M4 Coupé by way of adding a fully-detailed interior. There’s no telling when the next major update will hit or what it will contain, but one thing is for certain: it won’t disappoint. With the remaining Red Bull X Challenge events due at the end of the month who’s to say we aren’t counting down to the next big thing?

SCEA has announced the release date for KAZ: Pushing the Virtual Divide, a documentary about the history of Gran Turismo and its creator, Kazunori Yamauchi. The film will be released on January 22, 2014 via web streaming service, Hulu.

The latest Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, featuring a series of five expert level racing events exclusive to British cars weighing 1200kg (2,645 lbs) with no more than 500PP and no better than Comfort/Soft compounds or less.

The latest Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 6, featuring three new time trial events exclusive to the Volkswagen Scirocco R, KTM X-Bow, and the Acura NSX.

The third update for Gran Turismo 6 is now available, and it brings with it the all-new Toyota FT-1 Concept Coupé, a full interior to the 2014 BMW M4 Coupé, new Seasonal Events, as well as amending the date of availability of the remaining Red Bull X Challenges which now reads “Available in January 2014”.

Toyota is kicking off the North American International Auto Show with the reveal of their latest flagship concept – the FT-1 Concept coupé.

Speedcafe published an article highlighting Nissan’s plans to open up GT Academy in Australia sometime within the next year and a half. In the article, Nissan Global Motorsport Director Darren Cox gave his take on bringing the program to the country:

On January 15th, WRS Online will continue to support the online racing platform of GT6, hosting our fourth “Unofficial” online race event.  We’ll go back to another old favorite from GT5, with “The Legacy (really?) V2.0“.  The races are open to anyone participating in the GTP_Registry GT6 Qualifier (And those who are on the GT5 Registry).

Images courtesy of GT Academy Flickr.

All has been quiet on the Gran Turismo front for the past several weeks and one has to wonder what’s going on behind the elusive doors of Polyphony’s office. The days of January are still at their earliest, but with two updates currently scheduled for this month it shouldn’t be too long before the wheels are turning at a steady pace again.

The latest Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, featuring a series of two racing events exclusive to non-racing cars with no more than 600PP and no better than Sports/Hard compounds or less for this week’s time trial, and Comfort/Soft compounds or less for this week’s drift trial.

Dale Lomas is a driving instructor and race car driver at the Nurburgring, and he had the chance to drive the Swiss Racing Toyota GT86 in a VLN race at the circuit last year. When he got his hands on GT6, he quickly purchased the game’s GT86 Race Car to create this comparison video.

Gran Turismo 6 has been available for a month now, and in that short amount of time the game has evolved from its vanilla offering to that of something that has been host to first-time experiences and the rekindling of those in the past: The 2014 BMW M4 Coupè, a vehicle that won’t even be on sale until sometime this year, the Hudson Hornet that served as Mario Andretti’s “first love”, and the introduction of the all-new Red Bull X challenges – all of this within a 31 day time period.