Welcome to this week’s PlayStation Community Update, where we shine the light on some of the most interesting content that is inherently owned and provided by you, the gamers. Last week, you may have checked out the Battle Bowl, a massive Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 tournament between 2 competitive communities: FraggedNation and Urgent Fury. This tournament is going on all month so you can still sign up today!

This week, we’re shining the spotlight on the legendary Gran Turismo series and some marquee community events that any racer might want to get involved in. We reached out to Gran Turismo 5 fanatic MasterGT to give us a breakdown of Gran Turismo 5 community events. If you love the series as much as millions of other gamers do, read on. Whether you’re a newcomer to Gran Turismo 5, or a racing vet, don’t hesitate to jump into some of these fantastic community races.

Don’t forget to download the 2014 Corvette Stingray Final Prototype, the latest DLC for Gran Turismo 5! Click here to add it to your cart from the SEN Online PlayStation Store.

Visit the Gran Turismo Events space in the PlayStation Community forums to join in the events, find new friends, and compete in an incredibly welcoming community.

The PlayStation Community forums are home to a lot of different things, but within the Gran Turismo 5 community, we’ve made a nice little home here by being able to meet racers new and old through a multitude of different events. So to start with, make sure you book mark it!

So that’s step 1; swing in and get to know the Gran Turismo community, filled with amazing players (some of which have been finalists in the GT Academy reality series), great Photo Mode artists, or racers who are generally knowledgeable of GT or cars and racing. In fact, for the past two years, this community has been using Gran Turismo to bring players of all abilities together on-line, no matter what type of racing interests them. Rally racing, NASCAR, F1, drifting, pick-up type racing, GT, Touring Car and just about any other type of high speed fun has been available here. Gran Turismo has the variety of cars, and the millions of drivers, to make this possible. Because of the depth of the GT community the GT Events forum always has something new going on, including the fresh Sunday Cup series of races!

And that brings us to Step 2; the races! Here’s how you can get in on the action with us. Two weekly events are specifically designed to attract racing fans from the broader forum membership and have had support from the PlayStation Community Management team, dedicated PlayStation Community forum members, and other special guests.

The Saturday Afternoon Events are run by GT community member, cr0wlft0fdmurder. Click here to visit the event page.

The Saturday afternoon races normally are longer races, taking up to about one hour to finish. That gives everyone a chance to settle in for a more measured and natural race, and we feel it captures the essence of racing cars. You can join in as soon as tomorrow, 2/9! Click here to check out the events page on the Saturday Afternoon Events.

The Monday Night Events are run by me, MastrGT. Click here to visit the event page.

The shorter Monday Night races have also been quite popular because they allow many players to race whenever they can during a weekday evening. The race program allows using virtually any and all of the 1,100 cars in GT, depending on each night’s race details: small street cars, then small race cars; bigger street cars, then bigger race cars. Anything is possible, no matter which car or track we use. The cars are usually very easy to find and down time between races is meant to be short, so the tempo is kept high. The open lobby can be very popular, but we can race over two, sometimes three, hours, making it very easy for you to join in on the fun.

Thanks MastrGT, representing the Gran Turismo community! There are a lot more racing events to be found, and you can find out about all of them by visiting the Events page in the PlayStation Community forums. If you’re a racing fan who’s looking for a great community with some heated competition, hop in to these areas and feel the GT Community love.

Chat with fellow PS gamers in our Forums! There’s plenty to talk about, with different sections including:

PlayStation Plus

PlayStation Home

PS Trophy Leaderboard

Whatever you want (aka Off-Topic area)

Win PlayStation games and products every Wednesday on Twitter! Next week we’re giving away voucher codes for the PS3 and PS Vita versions of Urban Trial Freestyle. Winners will also get a signed tshirt from French motorbike rider Julien Dupont, who is featured in the game.

Follow @HeyPlayStation on Twitter to be eligible to win this, and other prizes from PlayStation.

Friday, February 8th

Battle Bowl I – Qualifying Event

Saturday, February 9th

Battle Bowl I – Qualifying Event

Sunday, February 10th

Battle Bowl I – Qualifying Event

Monday, February 11th

Battle Bowl I – Qualifying Event
Gran Turismo: Monday Night Racing
Urgent Fury Aftermath Black Ops 2 League

Tuesday, February 12th

Battle Bowl I – Qualifying Event
Uncharted 3: Lab Update
Black Ops 2: Target Locked

Wednesday Febraury 13th

Battle Bowl I – Qualifying Event
Starhawk Wednesdays
Urgent Fury Aftermath Black Ops 2 League