Nissan Europe has today issued a press release detailing the campaigns their three GT Academy graduates will be driving in the 2012 season.

While last year we reported on a statement from Signatech Nissan’s team boss that Jordan Tresson would be joining Lucas Ordoñez at the team, Nissan’s announcement today says that Lucas has joined Greaves Motorsport. He will run an LMP2 campaign in the European Le Mans Series in their Zytek Nissan alongside Tom Kimber-Smith (who will be defending this title) and Alex Brundle. Lucas will also be driving the Le Mans 24 Hours for the team alongside Alex and his father Martin Brundle.

US automotive giant Ford is the latest car manufacturer to acknowledge the effect that video games have on brand recognition and vehicle sales, particularly in the 20-30 demographic.

In this November article in the New York Times, Ford cited research showing that the presence of their models in video games boosted brand awareness, brand loyalty and purchase intent by around a third, with gamers agreeing that certain models from the range were more fun to drive from their experiences in games alone. Since Ford’s official gaming debut in 1995 – with Sega Rally – they claim over 250 million copies of games with Ford models featured have shipped and with Ford a permanent fixture of Gran Turismo since the second game, 54 million of those games are Gran Turismo games. Ford even merited a cover car, with the iconic GT adorning the boxes of Gran Turismo 4, and has recently increased its PlayStation presence with a virtual showroom on PlayStation Home.

iRacing has sent out an update.

Hey Everyone, 

So you may have noticed the large download you had to perform last night to your iRacing software. Well the iRacing crew updated several cars and visual cues as well updates to the physics model to get iRacing that much closer to the real thing (how much closer can they really get?). 

Well here is a quick list of some of the things they did:

The following cars received the New Tire Model. This helps balance the car out significantly and makes them much more fun to drive. 

• Star Mazda 
• Radical SR8
• Riley Daytona Prototype
• Williams FW31

Additionally, they updated the tire model on the following cars:

• Chevrolette Corvette C6R 
• Chevrolet Impala 
• Chevrolet Impala Class B 
• Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS 
• Chevrolet Silverado

Build 141 introduces vast improvements made with the title’s input & force feedback system and the developers are looking for as much feedback on these changes as possible, leading to this special release.

Check out the video.

Turn 10 has announced their February DLC car pack, and it's filled with some doozys! The February ALMS Pack will release on Feb. 7th and includes: 

- 1991 Mazda #55 Team Mazdaspeed 787B 

- 2011 #2 Audi Sport North America R18 TDI 

- 2011 Bentley Platinum Motorsports Continental GT 

- 2010 Dodge Quinton "Rampage" Jackson Challenger SRT8 

The guys over  InsideSimRacing.tv  at have put together a video tutorial for the Fanatec Inversion Kit.

Both Fanatec’s new CSR & CSR Elite pedal sets can be inverted using the kit, allowing hanging pedals to simulate the pedal layout of open-wheelers and other race cars.

The Inversion Kit sells for 49 Euros/Dollars and the video below shows all the steps required to transform the pedals.

The guys over at SimRacingHardware.com have released a first video of their Thrustmaster T500 SLI Mounting System.

Even though the T500 RS comes with plenty of high-end features like 1080 degree steering, the wheel lacks a display and rev-meter such as the Logitech G27′s. The SLI Mounting System changes that as it equips the wheel with a SLI display, rev-meter & and four rotary encoders.

The mounting system uses the SLI-M or SLI-I displays, the mounting system alone sells for 69.95 British Pounds while a version including the pre-wired SLI display sells for 225 Pounds.

Nice graphics and a testament to what we can expect.

For the first time since the start of the Nissan GT Academy programme in 2008, Nissan entered an all-gamer car in the 2012 Dubai 24 Hours, pairing up four winners of the GT Academy competition.

While GT Academy winners previously were assisted by experienced racing hands, this time the GT Academy guys were on their own and the experiment very well paid off as the GT Academy winners finished in an impressive 3rd in class, 26th overall.

The #100 Nissan 370Z was driven by the winner of the first GT Academy Lucas Ordonez, who was joined by 2010 winner Jordan Tresson and 2011 winners Jann Mardenborough (GT Academy Europe) & Bryan Heitkotter (GT Academy North America).

The GT Academy Nissan qualified 4th and ended up on the podium after 24h grueling hours of racing despite hitting a bunch of problems on the way, including brake issues & power problems caused by a blocked air filter. A great performance by the drivers and trouble for some of their opponents helped the team to a rewarding finish, much to the delight of the drivers.

The graphical quality of rFactor 2 and whether the title is a significant step up in the graphics department has been much discussed in the sim community ever since the first previews have been released.

If you haven’t made up the mind on this issue yet, now’s the time as NeedRacing have put together an interesting comparison video.

The video shows the Renault Megane at Joesville Speedway, both in rFactor & rFactor 2, two simulations that are almost six and a half years apart in terms of initial release.