GTPlanet Weekly Rewind: The Real Folk Blues

I think it’s time to blow this scene. Get everybody and the stuff together. Okay, three, two, one – let’s jam! 

Okay, so it’s not the same song but this week’s title would have left you feeling empty inside had I simply opted for “Tanked!”, not to mention it undoubtedly would have confused at least one person. The point here, and I’m flocking my pop culture feathers here once again, is this week’s title is a direct reference to the end theme of Cowboy Bebop, one of the best Japanese anime around.

If you’ve never seen Bebop then I’d suggest having that resolved as soon as possible whether you’re a fan of anime or not. Despite having been released in the late 90’s it has aged surprisingly well and is better than a lot of the new things that are on the airwaves now. Bebop is about a crew of bounty hunters and their assortment of adventures and misadventures alike, but it doesn’t simply end there because the series explores plenty of philosophical aspects. The only other anime I’d recommend as much (that’s not MSG) is Outlaw Star, but that’s for another day in the Rewind.

Moving past that there’s been quite the influx of news relating to Gran Turismo this week, all of which is going to come to a head next week May 15th as the 15th Anniversary is celebrated during a special media event at the Home of British Motor Racing, Silverstone Circuit.  What awaits? Some say GT6 is finally going to rear it’s head, but whatever is going to happen we’ll be there to bring you all of the breaking news. I know I’m excited.

And before you ask, yes, I’m still coming down from my Iron Man 3 high, and couple that with the incoming high of Star Trek: Into Darkness next Thursday and I’m unsure how I’m going to contain so much blockbusting awesome without my head exploding into a flurry of multicolored confetti. Enough of my usual ramblings for now we’ll pick those up later on, for now let’s move the gear level to “R” and get the Rewind underway!

GTPlanet Picture of the Week

This week’s featured image, once again recommended to us by Qnrad and courtesy of RaY29rus, features Audi’s ultimate station wagon, the RS 6 Avant as it stands in a solemn fashion at Ahrweiler Street in Germany with a beautiful setting in the distance. The detailing is crisp and really evokes a feeling of surrounding and sense of environment; if you stared any harder you may even begin to picture things down to sounds and smells.

Have a suggestion for next week’s featured image? Drop me a private message, entitle it “GTPlanet Picture of the Week” and fill it out with your two choices and they’ll be featured in upcoming Rewinds. NOTE: You cannot elect your own work.

The Sunday Cup

No, not that Sunday Cup! The Sunday Cup featured here, championed by GTPlanet’s own GTP_ADE, is a championship race series that takes place over the course of 15 weeks and is of the one-make nature, making it an exclusive affair where everyone is driving identical machinery and the one defining factor is that of skill.

Started in January 2012, the Sunday Cup is currently running on it’s third season but what makes this series unique is it’s centralized focus around Lotus, with the star of the entire series being the Evora sports car.

Over the course of the series your Evora (tuned to replicate the Evora S IPS) will have undergone evolution from road car to race car, and this evolutionary process will occur every 2 races where you will be required to apply mandatory and optional modifications. By the last two races your Evora will have taken on identical performance specifications to that of the Evora GT4 Endurance race car.

With only two races left in this third season you’ll be hard pressed to make any headroom unless you’re already an active participant but that shouldn’t deter you from wanting to participate in next season’s festivities, and if this season’s prizes are anything to go by you’ll want to give it your all because you can walk away with some serious swag given enough effort. For all of the information be sure to stop by the official thread here.

GTPlanet Weekly Race Series (WRS) Online Events: Academy/D-League Racing

This week the WRS comes to you from the future! Whilst a bit of an exaggeration it’s not exactly false as the event in question takes place a week from today. Let’s have a look at what awaits, shall we?

Saturday May 18 The WRS Academy/Development-Leaque presents “Elizabeth, Queen of the Forest”, a “Tuning” Online Race Combo.

Lotus Elise 111R Race Modification ’04 @ Deep Forest Reverse

In this series of noncommittal weekly returning events we allow participants from divisions 3-5 and afford them the opportunity to get used to clean, close racing in a relaxed enviroment. The combos which will be used are based upon the known Weekly Online Racing Events. The purpose of these D-League races is to let lower division drivers develop, improve laptimes, race pace and confidence hereby helping them to be able to enjoy their online races even more.

These events are followed by our division 1 and 2 drivers as they function as ‘instructors’, and if needed tips and advice will be offered by them. This way lower seated drivers would be better prepared in the other WRS Online Racing events.

Every Saturday at 18:00 GMT the Academy opens with an instruction/warm up hour, consisting of sample laps, Q&A and a small test race. Hour two starts with a qualification followed by the D-League feature race.

Interested and like to join? Look here for all the information you’ll ever need, and remember that you NEED to be registered before officially participating in the WRS, and that can only be done by submitting a time for the official GTP Registry Qualifier.

GTPlanet Member of the Week

You know what time it is, time to acknowledge another grand member of the community who has stood out for all that they’re worth, and this week’s inductee is no exception. Having found their calling in our Opinions and Current Events sub-forum he has genuinely become one of the most upstanding members of the community to date.

While this is currently the second member induction to not be accompanied by a portrait, the interview itself more than makes up ground for that and I can personally guarantee it’ll be a read that you won’t soon forget. If you’re already intrigued and are clamoring to know who this week’s member is, then clamor no more and welcome Foolkiller into the GTPlanet Member of the Week hall of fame!

For the full interview be sure to stop by the Member of the Week thread and get to know Foolkiller better, or maybe even see the world through his eyes. He is, after all, the sixth member to be recognized among his peers. Who’s next?

Anyone you’d like to see recognized as the Member of the Week? Drop me a private message, entitle it “GTPlanet Member of the Week” and fill it out with your choices and they’ll be featured in upcoming Rewinds. NOTE: You cannot nominate yourself.

GTPlanet Vehicle of the Week

This week’s featured vehicle is the successor to the R15 TDI with the sole intention of continuing their string of victories and outright domination at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, none other than the Audi R18 TDI. Presented at the Audi Sportpark in Ingolstadt on December 10th, 2010, the R18 would become the second closed cockpit Le Mans Prototype since the company’s first entrant in 1999, the R8C.

For development of the R18 the company was able to rely on the experiences gained with the aforementioned R8C as well as the corporate sister brand’s Bentley Speed 8, which was victorious in 2003. Audi was also able to rely on the A4 DTM which featured a heated windshield thus allowing them to shorten the development cycle with respect to the ventilation of the cockpit, the doors, and the heating of the windshield. The chassis and aerodynamic package is yet another template in which Audi were able to lean on previous efforts, such as the R8, R10, and R15 models.

The R18 is the first LMP race car to feature full LED headlamps, and was developed in cooperation with Audi Sport and the Technical Development division of Audi AG; making their mark on the development of the headlamps, the daytime running lights form the shape of a “1”.

At the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2011, the debut for the new prototype, cars #1 and 3 driven by Mike Rockenfeller and Alan McNish respectively were involved in heavy high speed crashes with Ferrari’s, despite this both drivers walked away from the incidents without any serious injuries despite the chassis’ themselves being completely totaled. The remaining R18, car #2, driven by Marcel Fassler, Andre Lotterer, and Benoit Treluyer went on to win the race by nearly 13.9 seconds, thus securing the 11th victory for the team in the past 13 years.

GTPlanet Tune of the Week

Another fact about Gran Turismo: much like the series of Skylines, Gran Turismo is also host to the history of Mazda’s nimble and sporty Miata and there’s no getting around that fact either, so instead of wallowing about wondering when other brands/cars are going to receive proper recognition, why not jump behind the wheel of one of these marvels and see what all of the fuss is about? And if you’re persuaded to do just that then you should look no further than this week’s featured tune which features NEWDRIVER2 of Clueless Tunes.

This tune, recommended to us once again by danbojte focuses on the 2007 Mazda Roadster RS (NC) in 406PP trim and is built to specification to be thrown around the ‘Ring while wearing a pair of Comfort/Soft tires. With 184 horsepower packed under it’s hood you shouldn’t expect to be within arm’s reach of a sub-6 minute lap time, however, what you should expect is the ability to dive into corners while carrying a good deal of speed with the utmost stability.

Victory is the name of the game as usual and if it’s a deserving victory that you’e after and you want to do so using a swift Japanese sports car, then you’ll want to stop by and see the tune for yourself.

Exactly like the Picture and Vehicle of the Week features, if you have any suggestions for the upcoming Rewinds be sure to drop me a private message, entitle it “GTPlanet Tune of the Week” and let me know. NOTE: You cannot elect your own work.

Pre-race CarPron ALMS BMW Z4 GTE – Shakedown

You’d thought I would forget this week, didn’t you? Truth be told it almost slipped my mind. For this week’s video I’m not going to do the usual introduction-cum-recap, instead I’m going to let the video (and Leo Parente) speak for themselves. Enjoy.

GTPlanet Photomode Competitions 

In Week 128 of the Standard and Advanced competitions you are to put your best foot forth and show the community just how seriously you take your in-game photography. All you need to know is as follows:

Week 128, Standard: Tension vs. Release – This is a rather witty one and I can guarantee it’s absolutely not going to be whatever it is you’re thinking of, that is unless you’ve already seen and participated in this week’s competition, in which case you’d be cheater and no one likes a cheater. Where were we? Right, this week’s theme can be summed up as the following: tension on the field and the release of crossing the finish line.

Week 128, Advanced 2.0: Forgotten Beauties – Often times you’ll find pictures of the Enzo Ferrari, McLaren F1, and the Lamborghini Murcielago LP 670-4 SV while other beauties are confined to collecting dust. This week we’re going to change that by encouraging you to hop into one of the lesser seen vehicles in the game and exploit them for their beauty.

For all of the relevant information pertaining to this week’s challenges be sure to stop by here and here.

Closing Thoughts

This past week I finally had the opportunity to see Prometheus since I didn’t go out and see it when it was in theaters for whatever reason, and it was fantastic. What I didn’t know is that it’s something of a prequel to Alien. I kid you not, I had absolutely no idea. Toward the end (SPOILER ALERT!!!) not even the early alien creature that burst out of the Engineer’s chest set off any alarm bells, although you’ll be pleased to know that I did remark “Wow. It gave birth to a Zora-Alien thing.” You can’t make this stuff up folks!

What did set off the bells and whistles was when I came across the Wiki page and noticed Ridley Scott had involvement with the movie – then it hit me like a ton of bricks that this had something to do with Aliens. Now I’ll have to watch it again so I can form some type of cogent understanding of the whole thing as I wasn’t watching it in the sense of “should I be expecting this?” or “well that doesn’t make a lick of sense!” I was simply watching from a purely unbiased “I hope this is will be bloody awesome!” perspective.

So now that I’m having Iron Man/RDJ withdrawal symptoms I am patiently looking toward next week Thursday when I can dash to the movie theater and get my second helping of some Star Trek, and boy does it look just as great as, if not better than the first from 2009—has it really been that long? Also, I’m currently wrapping up the Rewind while listening to the theme from Halloween 2 (the original 1981 sequel, not Rob Zombie’s “H2”) because I’m odd, it’s soothing, and John Carpenter is a genius. I mean, who just sits at a piano randomly strumming about only to come up with that?

Once again I forgot to mention that I’m on Twitter now. What was once going to be a bit of parody account (because I don’t use Facebook or Twitter for any reason whatsoever) has quickly turned into me using Twitter rather effectively. So, follow me and suggest all things Rewind-worthy from the comfort of your tablets, phones, or Skynet-linked computers. Remember, when the machines finally rise you’ll need someone to write pieces regarding the matter littered with Armageddon-y undertones and I can be just that guy! What were we talking about? Right, Twitter, so if you’ll follow me here the Rewind can be delivered to you in a timely fashion not seen since snail mail. Wait, that’s not the right thing to say!

You will be showered in Rewind, Seasonal Event and future article goodness courtesy of yours truly though so there’s that worth looking forward to – once I’ve bothered to get the thing up and running. It can also be used to suggest things for upcoming Rewinds, so that’s now two ways you all can keep me on my toes.

With that said it’s time to end, until next week keep racing! Snake Eater!

GT5 Photomode images by drfitinziggy and BlameAuntJemima.

See more articles on GTPlanet Member of the Week and GTPlanet Weekly Rewind.