Nurburgring Nordschleife

Last weekend was a busy one for Gran Turismo stars on real-world race tracks; in addition to Wolfgang Reip taking victory in the European GT Academy 2012, previous winners Lucas Ordoñez, Jordan Tresson, Bryan Heitkotter, and GT series creator Kazunori Yamauchi were also competing.

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.

Sony Germany has published an official HD video comparing Gran Turismo 5’s Nurburgring with the real “Green Hell” and – needless to say – it’s pretty impressive. There’s no snow flurries, though!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pmGJNejl-M

Photomode image courtesy of Animera.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dREGCHLhh5c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q32V6ysLcZs

Here’s an interesting new video from some type of GT5 demonstration session in Russia, which appears to show off a unique build of the game we haven’t seen before. While it does not have the skidmarks revealed at Gamescom 2010, it does have an updated damage model similar – though not necessarily identical to – the one found in the GT5 Kiosk Demo that’s been popping up at retail stores around the United States.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8bjWG-bRmc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcCxx81duCg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXBCrJSVPe8

You’ve probably seen most of these before – I had them posted here for a few hours yesterday until Sony asked me to take them down due to a press embargo on the material. No matter – now I’m able to share the full, original images with you in all their glory at 18 megapixels. Enjoy!

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

One of the largest and most impressive collection of GT5 screenshots we’ve seen yet.

EuroGamer was first to share new details that emerged from the private GT5 presentation Yamauchi hosted at E3 on Wednesday, and now we’ve got even more information from MotorTrend, Kotaku, IGN, and GameSpot. Now, in addition to the new details I’ve already covered, here’s what we know:

As you may recall, GT series creator Kazunori Yamauchi joined the Team World Car Awards for the 24-Hour Nurburgring race just a few weeks ago. Despite some mechanical troubles, they finished fourth in their class, with Yamauchi himself setting the team’s second-fastest lap at 9:48. Check out on-board video of one of his laps below, featuring his signature smooth-and-steady driving style. Congratulations to the whole team, and thanks to all who sent this in!

Mimaximax has just shared another video clip from his time in Germany a few weeks ago – this time providing some in-car gameplay footage from a Viper ACR on the latest revision of the complete Nurburgring circuit. While it’s nothing particularly new, you’ll get a good impression of the physics this most recent demo was running.

There’s some good news confirmed in a new article from Auto Express – a “secret” demo was apparently at last weekend’s 24-hour race, which showed the Green Hell at night. They were also able to confirm that the race-spec Lexus IS-F which Yamauchi drove in the event will be included in the game:

Here’s our first look at the Nurburgring GP course and the newly-revised Nordschleife in motion. Pay special attention to all of the spectators which have been added around the Nordschleife, which we first saw in last week’s batch of screenshots. Thanks to all who sent these in!

As many of you know, the father of the Gran Turismo series is competing in the Nurburgring 24 Hours race, going on right now. He’s driving the #72 Lexus IS-F with teammates Hideshi Matsuda, Owen Mildenhall, and Peter Lyon (learn more about them here). You can monitor their progress live on the race’s official website – they’ve even got streaming video coverage available right here. For audio coverage in English, tune in to Radio Le Mans (thanks for the shout-out on the air , guys!). I’ll update this post when the results are in. Good luck, Yamauchi-san!