Spa Francorchamps

The GT Sport World Tour event in Tokyo has revealed some interesting new content for GT Sport: Spa-Francorchamps in the wet.

Since GT Sport launched two years ago, fans have been wondering where Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps went. The famous, challenging strip of asphalt in the Belgian Ardennes featured in both Gran Turismo 5 (as paid DLC) and Gran Turismo 6, but has been absent from the PS4 version… until now.

UPDATE: The official Gran Turismo channel has released a video of Spa, with NYC GT Championship Manufacturer Series champ Cody Latkovski taking players on the tour:

It’s one of the world’s most famous, most challenging race tracks. Unsurprisingly, it’s also one of the most in-demand tracks among fans of GT Sport. An impasse over licensing seemed to have dashed our hopes of ever seeing it in the game, but it now seems that it’s on the way — and a lot sooner than we’d thought.

This weekend marks the 71st running of the 24 Hours of Spa, and those of us with an interest in the virtual world might want to keep an eye on the action.

There’s few requested content items quite like it. Other than perhaps a premium Mk4 Supra (which Polyphony Digital delivered over a year ago), there’s nothing the fans want to see in GT Sport quite like Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.

Spa-Francorchamps, home of the Belgian GP, will remain on the F1 calendar until at least 2021. The current deal for the track saw its contract expire after this year’s race.

The 2017 F1 season returns from summer break for this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix in a familiar way. That is to say even in the sport’s absence the pecking order continues unabated.

The 2016 Spa 24 Hours endurance event recently finished with the #99 BMW M6 GT3 from ROWE Racing team claiming the victory after 531 laps. Variable weather conditions and several unforeseen pace interruptions caused enough anxiety to make the race entirely unpredictable.

We haven’t forgotten about Forza Motorsport 6: Apex, the latest free-to-play release of the Forza series and the first one built for the Windows 10 platform. Although it doesn’t feature the traditional hallmarks of the console-released titles in the franchise (online multiplayer, wheel support and livery editor), with 63 cars and approximately 20 variations of 6 playable circuits, the game still offers a tease of what’s to come, as future Forza titles will be released on Xbox One and PC simultaneously.

It’s been a huge year for the GTPlanet Endurance Series. With more than 70 teams, 187 participants, and 69 different winners after 2,187 racing man-hours, we’re wrapping things up with this year’s grand finale: a 24 hour race at Spa Francorchamps!

The weekend is finally here, and more than 40 drivers are set to represent 12 different teams in a virtual 24-hour race at Spa Francorchamps in Gran Turismo 6!

It’s time for another online endurance race in Gran Turismo 6, and this time, we’re going to Belgium’s Ardennes forest for a 24-hour race at Spa Francorchamps!

This guest contribution is by Nick McMillen, 2013 United States GT Academy Champion. This is the account of his journey as one of the newest Nismo Athletes. Stay tuned for future articles from our racing driver contributor coming soon as he experiences and progresses through his professional career.

Jann Mardenborough had another successful weekend in the GP3 Series, taking a podium finish at the Hungarian round of the championship.  The young Brit had to work hard in Saturday’s race – he qualified in 13th place after a red flag stopped his fastest run – but he got stuck in and took a very creditable seventh.  This put him on the front row of the grid for race two on Sunday.“I didn’t get as good a start as yesterday and Patrick (Niederhauser) got the jump on me,” explained Jann. “I settled in to third place and managed to hold onto it for the full race, despite the pace not being as good as yesterday.“It’s great to get a podium, and of course last week’s win, which takes me into the summer break with lots of new points.  This also builds my confidence for the next round at Spa so I can’t wait for that to come around now.”

Nissan and GT Academy head back to the fabled Spa-Francorchamps Circuit for their third run at the Blancpain Endurance Series flagship race. The team and drivers’ have experience on their side and are more determined than ever to take the top step on the podium in 2014.

Nissan has shuffled its driver line-ups ahead of this month’s Spa 24 Hours. In the No.35 Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 squad – already strengthened by the addition of two-time Super GT GT500 Champion, Masataka Yanagida –  Mark Shulzhitskiy replaces his Russian counterpart Stanislav Aksenov and joins Katsumasa Chiyo and Miguel Faisca.

The final online qualification round of GT Academy 2014 kicks off today, as the time trial which will be used to determine who moves on to regional finals around the world.