The PlayStation BETA event I told you about was finally held this past weekend. GTPlanet reader Adam Lang was first on the scene, and has been kind enough to provide us with lots of videos and screenshots from the GT5 demo on display. Most notably, you’ll see a much-abused Enzo Ferrari show heavy damage to its front bumper, along with an Audi R8 and the MOTUL R35 Skyline JGTC car. He’s also provided a lot of (literal) screenshots of the demo, so you can get a higher-resolution look at gameplay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB1UyZAV1Vo

Great news for our man Lucas Ordoñez (winner of the first GT Academy)! Lucas and his team, RJN Motorsports, have qualified their Nissan 370Z have first in its class for the Spa 24 Hours race this weekend. I’m not aware of any online live video streams of the race (if you find one, please share it in the comments below), but Lucas has promised me that he’ll be constantly updating his Twitter feed and his Facebook page directly from the paddock throughout the event. Good luck, Lucas!

Scans of the French PlayStation Official Magazine’s feature on GT5 reveal the magazine is weighing in on two of the game’s most exciting unannounced features. Most confidently, they’ve listed karting as a major category in the game and even included a small note on the track editor. Of course, the text is in French, but you can see all the scans for yourself right here.

Programmers from the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Society of Automotive Engineers have found an interesting way to build “green racing” features on top of Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. Apparently, the system works by sitting between the steering wheel and the PlayStation 3, watching and recording controller inputs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=746uWpjd85w&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPg7dXCIqeU

As of July 24th, we’re now less than 100 days away from the launch of Gran Turismo 5 and sales already off to a great start, with pre-orders alone  holding the game steady in the top charts of the web’s largest retailer, Amazon.com. GT5’s already broken into the top 50 best-selling games on the site, and it’s dancing around the PlayStation 3’s top 10 list (these lists are updated hourly, making it difficult to pin anything down to a specific rank). It’s even more impressive when you consider this is only the Collector’s Edition we’re talking about here, which commands a $40.00 premium over the regular game.

Before Kazunori Yamauchi created the first Gran Turismo, he began his career with a title known as Motor Toon Grand Prix. Produced by “Polys Entertainment” (later to become Polyphony Digital), it’s a cartoon racing game featuring 8 karts and 10 tracks. Sony has just announced the game’s availability for download as a “PSOne Classic” on PSN for $5.99. So, if you want to see how it all really got started, grab the 251 MB download and give it a go.

Mercedes-Benz continues to take full-advantage of its newfound affiliation with the Gran Turismo series with cross-promotions and online games, and this may be the best yet! Visitors to the Mercedes-Benz World in Weybridge, Surrey, UK get a chance to drive the SLS on GT5’s Nurburgring Nordschleife, recording an official time. The three fastest drivers (along with two more contestants randomly selected from the top 100 times) get to drive a real SLS AMG on Mercedes-Benz World’s test track.

Sony UK has announced a special event known as “PlayStation BETA”, to be held for a select group of gamers on July 30th-August 1st in Birmingham. It’s basically a chance for members of the public to try out the company’s biggest upcoming titles, and you guessed it: Gran Turismo 5 is on the list. Here’s the press release:

Sony’s showing off GT5 and several other big upcoming titles at a private media event on Tuesday night, and one of the editors of the company’s official PlayStation Blog has opened the floor for questions. From his post:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibi9cLBlFy8

A few more interesting quotes have emerged from the GT5 article in the latest “PlayStation: The Official Magazine (UK)”. According to Kazunori Yamauchi, Polyphony Digital has essentially future-proofed the game’s 200+ “Premium Cars”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd0fscJeyxg

If you watched all the coverage from E3 2010, you’ve probably seen some of these shots before – but, as usual, I’m posting them up again here in their original, watermark-free, 18-megapixel glory so you can take in every detail. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8padDk9ZakE