The Gran Turismo World Tour heads to the PlayStation Theater in New York City next week, and we are starting to learn more about what to expect from the event.
For the first time since the launch of the World Tour in Paris, Polyphony Digital is starting things off with a special press conference. Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi will be joined by a “special guest” on stage to announce an “exciting new partnership”, but we don’t yet know who or what that might be.
The last partnership was revealed at the event in Paris, where the Toyota GR Supra GT Cup was announced by Yamauchi-san and Gazoo Racing’s chief engineer Tetsuya Tada. Aside from Toyota, the only other official commercial partner for the FIA GT Championship is TAG Heuer.
As for potential new corporate partners, one candidate is Red Bull. The energy drink company has had a close relationship with Polyphony Digital for nearly a decade, since Adrian Newey designed the Red Bull X2010 for Gran Turismo 5.
Since then, updated Red Bull X cars have continued to appear in every Gran Turismo game (the X2019 was just added to GT Sport), and the final round of every Nations Cup has used the latest iteration of the Red Bull hypercar. What’s more, after New York, the next GT World Tour event will be hosted in Red Bull’s famous Hangar 7 in Austria.
Of course, the new “partnership” could also be with a high-profile individual.
Following the partnership’s reveal, a “Pro-Am Race” will see “12 FIA GT Championship competitors paired with 12 special guests, including a former F1 driver”. We have seen exhibition races at World Tour events before, but nothing on this scale.
Those are all the details we have for now, but we will be on the ground in New York next week to cover the special announcement as it happens.
The Pro-Am Race will be live-streamed on the official Gran Turismo YouTube channel next Friday, August 23, at 3:00PM EDT (19:00 UTC). Stay tuned for more coverage as the build-up to the New York World Tour continues all next week!
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