Holy cow, where to begin! Well first and foremost I must send my biggest thanks to Jordan(GTP) and Alex and Claudine(Sony). Without them this day would never have occurred and many great things would never have been sparked.

GTPlanet is very excited to team up with Nissan to co-host a live Twitter question & answer session with Lucas Ordonez, the real-world racing star that’s emerged from the first GT Academy competition! As you know, Lucas and his Signatech Nissan team just finished second-in-class at the 12 Hours of Sebring, the first race in the 2011 International Le Mans Cup calendar. They’ll be participating in all the events around the world this year, including the ultimate endurance race – the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

GT Academy winner Lucas Ordonez and his Signatech Nissan team finished second in class during their first race: the challenging 12 Hours of Sebring. After starting on pole, the team was forced to battle with gearbox and electrical issues, but still managed to bring the car home in one piece with a very respectable finish. Check the official race report for a complete overview of all the results.

As you know, GT Academy winner Lucas Ordonez has made huge strides in his racing career and is now competing in the 2011 International Le Mans Cup. The series kicks off today with the legendary 12 Hours of Sebring in Florida, and Lucas’ team, Signatech Nissan, are already off to a great start scoring class pole in the LMP2 category!

The European round of GT Academy 2011 has had a bit of trouble getting started in Italy. As you may recall, the rules officially stated the competition wouldn’t kick off in the country until today, March 18th, at 8 AM GMT. However, the launch date has passed and, as of writing, there’s still no sign of the Academy there yet. Italy also appears to have been removed from the list of eligible countries on the official website.

If you’ve spent much time online in GT5 or our forums recently, you may have seen one of the latest “glitches” discovered in the game (there’s more on YouTube). With a little help from a friend, you can “break out” of the Nurburgring using a high-powered car (usually the X2010) to explore or – unfortunately – acquire a lot of money very quickly. The glitch appears to work just as the one discovered at SSR7, which was just patched last week in GT5 v1.08. Watch the the video above to see how it’s done – hopefully this is an issue that can be resolved soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnn41vo7A9k

A new Chevrolet Camaro SS “Edge Special” is available in Gran Turismo 5, thanks to a promotion by Schick Razors. To download the car, stop by your local store and pick up one of Schick’s specially labeled products, then head over to this website and enter the code found in the packaging. You’ll be provided with another PSN code to enter in the PSN Store on your console.

As you’ve probably heard by now, Japan was rocked by a large earthquake and tsunami early this morning. Understandably, I’ve received questions from many other fans concerned about the safety of Kazunori Yamauchi and the team at Polyphony Digital. Fortunately, Kazunori tweeted not long after the event to report no major damage or significant injuries at either of the company’s studios.

The latest GT5 update, v1.08, has just gone live in Europe and North America (it became available in Asia earlier today). According to Polyphony Digital, this small patch only fixes one issue that has become something of a hot-topic in our forums over the past few days. Known as the “SSR7 glitch” or the “online money glitch”, it allowed players to quickly accumulate a lot of money and A-Spec experience points – check the video above to see how it was done.

After a short period of verification and clean-up, the official GTPlanet Registry Qualifier is once again open for submissions! 

SCEE has granted a product licensing company known as “Musterbrand” the rights to produce GT-branded shirts and outerwear in an online “Gran Turismo Boutique”. The products range in price from $24.00 to $199.00 (shipping not included).

GT Academy officially returns to Europe today, with a new, custom “Eifel” track specially designed for the competition by Kazunori Yamauchi himself. Participants will be piloting a Nissan 370Z around the new course, featuring sweeping, high-speed corners with plenty of helpful camber (check out the video above for a complete lap).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caAW1oZXQnc

The recent 1.06 and 1.07 updates have provided improvements to many areas of GT5 and even new features which have expanded its appeal and accessibility. However, it appears that these latest updates have made it even more difficult to conduct a fair and clean time trial competition of significant size where adherence to regulations and restrictions can be suitably monitored and enforced.

Kazunori Yamauchi confirmed via Twitter early this morning that “game saves during endurance races” are currently “under development” for Gran Turismo 5. Here’s a translation of the tweet kindly provided by our own Shirakawa Akira:

Winner of the first GT Academy, Lucas Ordoñez, has just been announced as a driver with Team Signatech Nissan, to compete in the 2011 International Le Mans Cup – including the 24 Hours of Le Mans! He’ll be piloting their ORECA O3 LMP2 car at ILMC events around the world, starting with the 12 Hours of Sebring next month.

If you fired up GT5 and read the in-game news feed this weekend, you’ve probably already taken note of Polyphony Digital’s latest tweak to v1.07. If not, listen up: the restriction on trading (or, specifically, “gifting”) cars worth more than 1 million credits to others has been temporarily lifted until March 3rd.

The third and final round of time trials in GT Academy USA finally came to an end Sunday evening after an intense (and thankfully drama-free) week of competition. Only 32 players (the top 8 from each region) remain, all of whom will be now be moving on to Round 4, the “National Finals”, next month.

In a surprise GT5 update (v1.06 was released just one week ago), Polyphony Digital has made a few more tweaks to the game, including a fairly major revision to the car gifting/trading system. Here’s the official list of what v1.07 (a 47 MB download) contains: