Buckle up, Gran Turismo fans – our annual GT Academy competition will return for a fifth season this year, and it’s set to be the biggest yet, with more countries than ever before participating.

The online gaming element of the competition gets under starter’s orders this July via a demo of the hotly-anticipated Gran Turismo 6 exclusively on PlayStation 3.

Since it began in 2008, the acclaimed virtual-to-reality competition has attracted over two million entries, with gamers and motor sport fans battling it out on Gran Turismo for the chance to become real Nissan racing drivers. Six former winners of the competition, which now runs in Europe, the USA, Germany, Russia, the Middle East and South Africa, are now Nismo Athletes competing in top-level motor sport on behalf of Nissan.
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Hello everyone.

A little over 15 years ago a small Japanese studio headed up by Kazunori Yamauchi embarked upon on a journey that was set to enrich the lives of many millions of gamers. The journey that the team undertook set new benchmarks in graphics, game physics and sheer entertainment.

That studio eventually became known as Polyphony Digital and the brand they created was of course Gran Turismo.

15 years on from that seminal moment, and after who knows how many billions of miles driven collectively by Gran Turismo gamers all over the world, I am very pleased to announce a special Gran Turismo 15th Anniversary Event due to take place on 15th May at Silverstone Race Circuit, England.
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Heads-up UK readers – look out for GT Academy 2012 on TV this week. ITV4 will be showing a six-part series following the trials and tribulations of the British and Irish competitors as they try to make the switch from GT5 to real Nissan cars at the famous GT Academy Race Camp at Silverstone.

The series will air today, Monday 4th February at 8.00pm (GMT), with each episode repeated on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. Fronted by Irish television presenter and long-time gaming and motorsport fan Craig Doyle, the show captures all the highs and lows of GT Academy and follows the contestants to discover which of them has the winning mentality and who will crack under the intense pressure.
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Hello everyone. PlayStation owners with a love of the automotive world will perhaps be aware of the GT Academy contest that we have created with our partner Nissan. In its fourth year, GT Academy challenges the conventions of motor sport by taking some of the fastest PlayStation gamers in the world and fast tracking them to become a professional racing driver.

Back in August 2012, the renowned GT Academy Race Camp at Silverstone Circuit unearthed the latest virtual-to-reality Champions. Since then, Wolfgang Reip (2012 European winner from Belgium), Mark Shulzhitskiy (2012 Russian winner), Peter Pyzera (2012 German winner) and Steve Doherty (2012 US winner) have spent the last four months completing a highly advanced Driver Development Programme in order to prepare them for their ultimate prize – to drive a Nissan 370Z GT4 Nismo race car at last weekend’s prestigious Dubai 24 Hours race (11-12 January).

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Hello Gran Turismo fans. In November, in tandem with our colleagues in the US, we gave you a tantalising glimpse of a soon to be revealed new vehicle from General Motors. The heavily camouflaged vehicle was downloadable for free and available to drive within Gran Turismo 5.

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