The GT5 Signature Edition Challenge, first announced last August, has come to a close, with Marco Calvo of Spain taking home the top prize: a brand-new Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG.

Well, this was certainly unexpected: Japanese news outlets are reporting that Polyphony Digital will be moving 50 of the company’s 150 employees more than 500 miles away, from Tokyo to Fukuoka, Japan. Apparently, the trauma Tokyo suffered during the Japan’s major earthquake earlier this year has prompted the move (Fukuoka is located in the western end of Japan, which generally sees less seismic activity compared to other parts of the country).

It was another busy weekend for real-world motorsports, and GT Academy stars were right in the action with great results. First up, Lucas Ordoñez and team Signatech Nissan were back on track at the the latest round in the ILMC 2011, the 6 Hours of Imola. The team drove a fast and consistent race, repeating their success at Le Mans with another excellent second-in-class finish, holding their lead in the points for the overall championship.

The latest GT5 Seasonal Event is now available, featuring Super GT cars. Races take place at the following locations:

As you may recall, today (June 30, 2011) was supposedly the last for GT5 Prologue’s online services. For unknown and unexplained reasons, Polyphony Digital has announced the service’s end-of-life has now been delayed (yes, there’s a lot of jokes to be made there) to September 30, 2011.

The latest GT5 Seasonal Event has just been posted, “La Festa Cavallino”, or “The Horse Festival”. Of course, the races feature production Ferraris with 650PP or less in the following events:

Remember GT5 Signature Edition Challenge, which offered the chance to win a real-life Mercedes SLS AMG? The unique B-Spec competition took place in January and the next stage has finally been announced, with the top-placed finishers headed to the Red Bull Ring in Austria for their chance to compete for the top prize.

Kazunori Yamauchi, the father of Gran Turismo, and his teammates Tobias Schulze, Michael Schulze, and Opera Performance founder Yasuyoshi Yamamoto, finished first-in-class in the 2011 Nurburgring 24 Hours! It was a dramatic race for Team Schulze, who were forced to spend a concerning amount of time in the pits addressing mechanical issues with their race-modified Nissan GT-R.

Just as it was with this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, Gran Turismo fans have another driver to cheer for in the Nurburgring’s 24-hour race: Kazunori Yamauchi. Here’s all the links you need to follow along:

The latest new Seasonal Event is now available in Gran Turismo 5, featuring British cars under 550PP and weighing less than 1,200kg. Races consist of the following:

The first complete interview with 2011 European GT Academy winner Jann Mardenborough has been posted to GT Academy’s Facebook page, and offers an interesting, inside look at the competition from the winner’s eyes. Once again, congratulations, Jann!

Kazunori Yamauchi has quietly returned to real-world racing. He was spotted at the four-hour ADAC Reinoldus-Langstrekenrennen Nurburgring VLN race in a Nissan GT-R, obviously inspired from the GT500 “Stealth” GT-R from Gran Turismo 5. His teammates include Tobias and Michael Schulze of Autohaus Schulze and Yasuyoshi Yamamoto, founder of Japanese tuning shop Opera Performance.

In the 7 months since Gran Turismo 5’s release, it’s never been officially suggested that additional downloadable content (“DLC”) would made available for the game – until now. While responding to a comment on the French PlayStation Blog, contributing Sony editor Guillaume Couturier shared an interesting bit of information (tip and human translation by bajwadu06):

The results are in: 19-year-old Jann Mardenborough from Cardiff, UK, has just been chosen as the European GT Academy 2011 champion! Head judge (and former F1 driver) Eddie Irvine made the announcement on Thursday after Jann finished first in a 20-minute race against the three other finalists (Thibault Lacombe of France, Carlos Murillo of Spain, and Danilo Bordino of Italy).

A new Civic-centered (pun intended) Seasonal Event is now available in Gran Turismo 5, open to all generations of Honda’s icon with no more than 450pp. Here’s the races:

As you may recall, a few months ago, GTlife – a Gran Turismo fan-magazine – was assembled and published online entirely by members of the GTPlanet community. After a positive response and more than 30,000 collective downloads, work began on the second issue of GTlife, and now – it’s here!

As you’ve probably heard by now, GT Academy winner Lucas Ordoñez and his teammates Franck Mailleux and Soheil Ayari drove an incredible race at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. Despite two unfortunate tire punctures, they pushed their Signatech Oreca Nissan back up through the field of LMP2 cars – all the way to a second place class finish in the world’s toughest endurance race.

Whether you’re a die-hard GT fan, a Forza fan-boy, or an iRacing snob, anyone who calls themself a “sim-racer” or “gamer” should take special interest in this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. Starting from class pole, GT Academy winner Lucas Ordoñez has an incredible opportunity to publicize and legitimize our niche hobby on the world stage. Here’s a batch of links and resources to help you follow along throughout the weekend. Good luck to Lucas and the Signatech team!

GT Academy winner Lucas Ordoñez and his Signatech Racing team are off to an incredible start at Le Mans, taking class pole in the LMP2 category with a 3:41.458 around La Sarthe. That’s 1.1 seconds ahead of the next LMP2 challenger, and nearly half a second faster than Oak Racing’s LMP1 car! For more, see the full qualifying results along with this overview of the day’s events.

As announced, the latest version of Gran Turismo 5, v1.10, has just been made available for download. Here’s a complete list of changes and bug fixes: