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.

Photomode image courtesy of EDK.

First mentioned at GT5’s Madrid launch party, the next round of the European GT Academy has been officially announced! The online time trials kick off Friday, March 4 and will continue through Sunday, April 17th. Players from 10 different countries, grouped by “territories”, will be eligible to participate:

Photomode image courtesy of EDK.

Woops! Borrowing a page from PD there, we didn’t have an update last week about the 10th week of the Photomode Competitions. We’ll be back to our regularly-scheduled program next week, but for now, here’s what’s going on this week in the Photomode sub-forum: