Before the Gran Turismo Asia Championship 2012, the finalists were invited on a tour of Polyphony Digital’s new offices in Tokyo. A video which features some highlights of the event has been released, and contains a few interesting surprises.

Nissan USA have released this short video reviewing Bryan Heitkotter’s very mixed weekend at the Brickyard Sports Car Challenge on July 27th.

With thanks to Vette_Drift for the quick tip. Image courtesy of ShadowPeter.

The latest round of Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, featuring Japan’s nimble and compact Kei cars. Cars are limited to a maximum of 355PP and Comfort/Soft tires or less. The challenges are as follows:

Jann Mardenborough, 2011’s European GT Academy winner, heads into this weekend on the back of a very unusual year indeed.

When Sony announced the GT5 Academy Edition at the end of July, they advised us that “there is more news yet to come on this title”. True to their word, a surprising suite of bonus content has been announced in the last few minutes.

Since the technology was first announced in January of 2010, Gran Turismo’s “Data Logger” has been mentioned a few times a year. As the first car to support it, the Toyota 86, makes its way into the world market, we’re finally learning a bit more about the product.

The latest round of Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, in the form of new Time & Drift Trials which feature the classic Honda S cars from the 1960s.

Ironically, England’s famous Silverstone Circuit has hosted every region’s GT Academy Race Camp every year since the competition began in 2008, yet has never actually been featured in a Gran Turismo game.

With so many locations from around the world featured in Gran Turismo 5, many fans have produced excellent videos and amazing photo libraries to see just how well the game represents reality.

Automotive news website PistonHeads had a brief chance to talk with Kazunori Yamauchi during his recent visit to the EU GT Academy 2012 finals.

For the past 8 weeks, special Seasonal Events have been held in Gran Turismo 5 for those who participated in GT Academy 2012 and won the in-game prizes offered by the competition.

The latest Seasonal Events are now available in Gran Turismo 5, featuring Lamborghini’s supercars in five A-Spec races. Cars are limited to a maximum of 550PP and Sports/Soft tires.

Last weekend was a busy one for Gran Turismo stars on real-world race tracks; in addition to Wolfgang Reip taking victory in the European GT Academy 2012, previous winners Lucas Ordoñez, Jordan Tresson, Bryan Heitkotter, and GT series creator Kazunori Yamauchi were also competing.

There’s just one more GT Academy 2012 champion waiting to be crowned, and the final Race Camp for the U.S. competition has just begun at Silverstone.

Last week, Kazunori Yamauchi joined the European GT Academy finalists at Race Camp and spoke with them, answering some of their questions.

The European GT Academy final reached its ultimate conclusion at a sodden Silverstone earlier this afternoon, with Belgium’s Wolfgang Reip crowned the ultimate winner for 2012.

The 2011 U.S. GT Academy champion, Bryan Heitkotter, is about to make his debut in the Pirelli World Challenge at Sonoma Raceway (formerly Infineon Raceway, as found in Gran Turismo 4).