If you’ve taken a look at the Mercedes’ Live Race Seasonal Event, you’ve probably noticed that many players atop the leaderboards scored their times by exploiting “shortcuts” around the track.

The latest GT5 Seasonal Event has just gone live, featuring one of the world’s favorite cars: the Mini! Races take place at the following locations, with no tire restrictions and are open to Minis with a maximum of 450PP:

UPDATE: Episode 1 is now available online! Thanks to Taboaamassa for the tip.

What do we have in store this week? Quite a lot, actually! The Tournament has stopped taking entries, PMC has a very colourful poll, 2.0’s theme is already bringing in quality entries for both sides, CCCL car/track combos being able to even double for 2.0 (more on that later), and the potential for hilarity in this week’s Photoshop theme. Onward!

The GT Academy 2011 driver development programme shifted up a gear last weekend when European winner Jann Mardenborough had his first competitive outing in a 420bhp Nissan 370Z GT4 race car. Racing in the Welsh Sports and GT Championship at Pembrey, Wales, the gamer-turned-racing driver recorded two strong third place finishes and a fourth in the weekend’s three races.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_le496-npM8

A batch of new Time and Drift Trials have gone live in Gran Turismo 5, along with a revised Online Car Dealership that highlights Mercedes-Benz.

Back to school, back to school – the days are getting shorter and the mercury’s dropping, but things are heating up in the Photomode sub-forum this month, as the Photomode Tournament makes its return. That means every week for these little overviews, coverage of the Tournament will take the top spot, and then the usual weekly competitions will be found directly underneath it. Here we go…

When it was first announced that GT Academy would be coming to the United States, it was also mentioned that the competition would air as a reality show on SPEED TV in the fall of 2011, with host Kristen Adams. Now, we finally have air dates for the program according to SPEED TV’s website:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVgBFBNyxS0

The Mercedes-Benz Live Race is almost here, and GTPlanet is proud to be an official streaming video partner for the event! The live broadcast begins at 3:00PM in the UK and will be hosted by popular F1 television commentator Martin Brundle.

In a surprise move, Polyphony Digital has released a new GT5 update less than one week after 1.11 brought a batch of bug fixes and a Jeff Gordon driving suit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibkOX0w7SoY

Polyphony Digital has been fairly quiet about their Gran Turismo TV service since Gran Turismo 5 was released. Today, though, they’ve added 23 new pay-per-view programs to the list, along with a free show about the 8th Annual Gran Turismo Awards held at SEMA last year. Here’s a look at the new line-up:

Already finished nicking Jeff Gordon’s clothes? Why not join one of this week’s Photomode competitions? Or even just cast your vote to pick a winner in this week’s polls? To sweeten the deal, this week sees the return of the Photomode Tournament, a knockout-style series of head-to-head matches that saw two of our forum members win the gift of Premium membership last time it was around. Theme suggestions are now being taken before signups start in a few days, so head on over to the discussion thread to get involved! Past that, we’ve got our usual weekly competitions:

Sony Hong Kong is launching an interesting new “online tournament”, starting September 1st, open to players from Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. The tournament consists of three regional and cross-regional rounds of competition, with some hefty prizes up for grabs, including a GT5-Edition Tissot watch, an Apiga AP1 racing seat, a Thrustmaster T500RS steering wheel, and over HK$10,000 in PSN vouchers.

The latest version of Gran Turismo 5, 1.11, is now available as a free download, weighing in at 62MB. As Kazunori Yamauchi previously announced, this minor update is focused on fixing bugs and glitches within the game, with more “features and content” expected to arrive in the next few months.

As was suspected when Polyphony Digital announced GT5’s online maintenance schedule earlier this week, Kazunori Yamauchi has now confirmed, via Twitter, the game’s next update should become available on August 29th/30th.

European GT Academy winner Jann Mardenborough’s bid to make the jump from PlayStation gamer to real racing driver took a massive step forward on Sunday when he contested a round of the Nippon Challenge national series at the UK’s Rockingham Circuit. The 19-year-old from Cardiff had an almost faultless day in the Nissan 370Z taking pole position and dominant wins in both races and recording the fastest lap of race one in the process. Jann’s American counterpart, Bryan Heitkotter, completed an excellent weekend for the PlayStation® Nissan Team taking second on the grid, second place in both races and the second fastest lap.

Some small down-time with the GT servers doesn’t stop Photomoders! On this, the last full week of August, we’ve got four new interesting themes, with our usual varying levels of editing allowed. Just like last week, there will be in-game prizes for both the PMC and 2.0, which will be announced later this evening in the Photomode Competitions sub-forum. What are the themes, though? Read on…