The FIA-Certified Gran Turismo Championships took place this weekend in New York City. We will discuss this in more detail later on. This coincided with the Gran Turismo and Michelin announcement we mentioned earlier. The event also provided me with an opportunity to chat with Kazunori Yamauchi, the CEO of Polyphony Digital and producer of the now-iconic Gran Turismo racing series. Kaz is obviously a passionate automotive enthusiast but also an accomplished racing driver. Having played this video game since its first version, Kaz has been a great inspiration to me and it was a pleasure to meet him.

The interview is below in an audio format. I tried to ask most of your questions and some of my own. I don’t do this often and so my voice is not as sultry as Jeff’s. And I meant for it to be transcribed but it proved too long to have done so. One of the reason why it’s twenty minutes long is because I had to speak thought Kaz’s translator, who also happened to be the person who translated all the text in the game from Japanese to English. Enjoy.

Hooniverse interview with Kazunori Yamauchi, Polyphony Digital/Gran Turismo.

I also got the chance to chat with Michelin’s Scott Clark. Scott is an Executive Vice President at Michelin and he had a lot to say about the new partnership between Gran Turismo and his company. He’s also an auto enthusiast and has been playing the game with his kids for many years.

Hooniverse interview with Scott Clark, Michelin.