Hello Everyone, and welcome to GT Academy live from the Dubai 24H.

I’m here today in Dubai on a rather historic occasion. As I write, four drivers who all earned their professional driving status through Gran Turismo and the GT Academy contest are on the track in an all GT Academy race team at the famously testing Dubai 24H race.

For those who don’t recall how we got here, a quick recap. GT Academy is a competition where we take a PlayStation gamer and, with the help of our partner Nissan, turn them into professional racing drivers. Last Spring, a young Welsh Gran Turismo player called Jann Mardenborough became the third European winner of the GT Academy contest.

Jann, having now completed his professional driver training with flying colours, lines up in a 420bhp Nissan 370Z GT4 race car team alongside our previous GT Academy winners Lucas Ordoñez and Jordan Tresson. Bryan Heitkotter, the winner of SCEA’s inaugural GT Academy in 2011, completes the all-Gran-Turismo line up.

Qualifying for the race took place on Thursday with senior GT Academy driver Lucas taking the wheel for the second qualifying session and posting a 2:11.142 around the 5.39km track – good enough for fourth in class. This race has 80 cars entered in a number of different classes. Nissan is running a ‘Champions’ GT-R GT3 car (third on the grid overall) that is up against Ferraris, Porsches, Audi R8s, Mercedes SLS AMGs. With four quick drivers who have all won Championships for Nissan this year they are looking for a win.

Our GT Academy boys are in a tricky class called SP2 that has some very fast cars in it. The experts say that all of our drivers are all equally quick and that means that by the end of 24 hours if they have no technical issues they will be in for a good result despite the stiff competition.

The race will be run in 30 plus degree heat. After coping with this afternoon’s challenging conditions and negotiating the 80 cars on track, the boys then face the different challenge of driving in darkness and identifying their braking markers lap after lap – while still having to pass slower cars and looking out for the fast cars coming up behind them.

I feel very lucky to be here to witness this incredible PlayStation and Nissan achievement and we have everything crossed for a great result for the GT Academy guys!

Post race news and results will appear here on PlayStation Blog and gran-turismo very soon so keep checking back.

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Hello Gran Turismo fans,

Firstly I would like to take the opportunity to wish you all a belated Happy New Year.

I hope you had opportunity to check out the December festive gift that was Functionality Update 2.02 with its host of new features and perhaps also the new cars of DLC Pack 2.

The great news I want to share with you today is that for GT fans the new year starts much like the old one closed – with brand new DLC. I can confirm today that there is another DLC pack winging it’s way to PlayStation Store very soon, 18th January to be exact.

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Hello Gran Turismo fans,

Last week we confirmed a whole host of new content coming your way for Gran Turismo 5 and I can confirm that it’s all now ready and available for your gaming pleasure.

First on the menu and published on PlayStation Store earlier today is DLC Pack 2, featuring four brand new rides including new Scirocco, Golf , Mini and GTR models.

Also available this week is Functionality Update 2.02 which went live yesterday. The update features a host of GT community inspired game improvements and the rather lovely Christmas bonus of a free Toyota 86 GT ’12 DLC vehicle (pictured at the top of this post).

So there you are lots of great new content to keep you going over the festive period, we hope you enjoy it (both the content and the festive period!).

Full details of Functionality Update 2.02 and DLC Pack 2 can be found on gran-turismo.com now.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

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Hello Gran Turismo fans,

As you may have read or seen there is new incoming content for GT5 and I am very happy to confirm that the date for the new content will be 21 December.

So what’s coming up? Firstly, we’ll have a second DLC Car Pack which follows on from first Racing Car Pack in October. Car Pack 2 will contain a new and improved 2012 Nissan GT-R Black edition R35, 2011 MINI COOPER S, 2010 Volkswagen Golf VI R, and a 2010 Volkswagen Scirocco R. Priced at €3.99 in Europe, the pack can be purchased from the PlayStationStore.

On the same day, a ‘Family Upgrade’ will be made available for free from the store. This means that if you bought the October DLC – Racing Car Pack 1, Course Pack 1, or the ‘Complete Pack’ that contained both – more than just one user per PS3 can now access the content. This means that family members or mates sharing the same PS3 can use those courses and cars as they will no longer be limited just to your particular PSN ID. The upgrade doesn’t apply to the Racing Gear Pack or Special Paint Pack and if you buy the new Car Pack 2 then this sharing function will be automatic.
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If you’ve had a passing acquaintance with PlayStation Blog over the last few weeks you might well have noticed some of the exciting new content being released for Gran Turismo 5. Initially there was the bumper pack of free content within Update 2.0 that became available last week. At the same time last week we also confirmed exactly what was coming your way within the new DLC packs for the game.

Well folks today is DLC day and I am happy to confirm that all of the five packs are now available. So (making sure you have downloaded Update 2.0) head over to PlayStation store and take your pick of the Racing Car, Course, Racing Gear or Special Paint Packs…heck you might even throw caution to the wind, go the whole hog and bag yourself the entire set in the Complete Pack. The choice is yours…

To set the decision making process off (and to see some of the new content in action) check out the re-worked GT5 opening movie that was included in Update 2.0. Enjoy!

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