Happy Friday Forza faithfuls, and welcome back to the Turn 10 Pitpass Report. We’ve been calling this the “Week in Review” on the front page because, as much as I love the ol’ Pitpass Report tradition, a week in review article makes much more sense to all the new Forza initiates coming online every day. Just before I sat down to dash out this blog entry, Turn 10 held its all-hands team meeting in the studio this afternoon with Alan “Big Boss” Hartman giving a summary of the overall health of the franchise as Forza Motorsport 3 turns 3 months old next week. The news, you may be glad to hear, is very good; FM3 is poised to hit a huge retail milestone in the coming weeks and we’ll have news to share with you guys soon. Meanwhile, DLC car packs continue to rock our collective faces. The AutoWeek Car Show Pack has generated some very positive feedback from the community – it seems we’ve hit a happy balance of car variety for most of you out there and downloads are flying off the digital shelf, as it were. But that’s just pure numbers talking. From the community side, we’ve been seeing some seriously stupendous photomode and liveries from the community with the AutoWeek Car Pack content.

AutoWeek Livery Challenge winning design by db9d9. See more AutoWeek liveries here.

Speaking of DLC content, we’ve finally announced the official winners of the Hyundai Foto Throwdown screenshot competition. No thanks to the holiday and new year break, results of the contest were delayed more than they should have been. At any rate, congratulations to all the winners of the Foto Throwdown. You will be contacted individually about your prizes (digital cameras, HD camcorders, memory cards, and more). As for everyone else who entered the photo contest but did not win, don’t worry – we’ll be sending over a consolation something-something  in your online inbox over Xbox LIVE. Look for it sometime next week. Meanwhile, those of you who registered for the Hyundai Genesis Coupe Championship should go and run your lap times on Round 1 of the Time Trial (on Iberian Reverse) right now! Competition is already pretty fierce from the top replays I’ve been watching. There are over $12,000 total in prizing on the line here so best of luck to all competitors in the leaderboard tournament this weekend.

Finally, gift cars and new matchmaking game types are coming soon. Well, one is happening sooner than the other. Next week, we’ll be gifting out our next batch of cars to the community. Everyone will receive the winner of our AutoWeek DLC livery contest Saleen Raptor while only VIPs will get a very special and limited edition of an American classic muscle car featured in one of the videos we debuted during E3, featuring a design by famous tattoo artist Mr. Cartoon. I’m working with Fred to get this car out on Monday or Tuesday so look for it then. New multiplayer game types are on the horizon as well and we’ll be introducing a “Last Car Standing” full-contact game type as soon as we’ve thoroughly tested it. Further out, you can expect even more multiplayer evolution and we’ll have more details in the coming weeks.

Before I take off, I just want to announce that I’ve personally selected the winner of the official Desktop Wallpaper contest, who gets to now own my desktop background real estate for a week. You can see all of the contest submissions here. And the winner is… MrMark83 with his gorgeous photo of the Audi R8 LMS show car emerging from the shadows of the warehouse on Benchmark High Speed Ring. I also picked a couple of runner-ups who will receive cool prizing (Forza-branded 2GB thumb drive and a Forza keychain), but the winners also scores a huge Forza Motorsport 3 standee!

Here’s the rest of this week’s update and everything that’s happening in the community. Oh, and one last thing, the Pitpass Report will be going live Friday mornings starting next week instead of its typical end of the day West Coast schedule!

Mr. Cartoon VIP livery inspired by the Forza Community Spotlight video.

This week in the Forza Motorsport 3 Community!

Featured Video: Forza 3 S14 Drifting

Week 4 - Clio Cup Time Trial Challenge

What: Official Turn 10 Featured Time Trial Challenge

When: Now until Friday January 29th at 12:00PM PST

Where: Time Trials in Forza Motorsport 3.

Track and Car: Sedona Raceway Park Club Reverse - 2007 Renault Clio RS 197

How: Navigate to the “Leaderboards” menu and scroll down to “Time Trial”. Scroll down to Clio Cup and “Press A to Start Race” at the top of the leaderboard. Set your best possible lap time!

Participated in last week's AutoWeek DLC Time Attack? See who was selected as a Random 500 winner here!

Che Chou's new desktop image provided by MrMark83, see the high res version here.

Forzamotorsport.net Community Competitions

The winners for the Forza Motorsport 3 Official Comps were announced last week. Congratulations to Raudi, FirstHotLap and Angry Paladin01 for their wins in the painting and photo comps.

This past week our community competitions were all about the AutoWeek Car Show Pack. All the winners for those competitions will be announced on Monday, January 25th.

Today marks the end to the first ever FM3 Tuning competition, the Porsche Cayenne challenge was a great success. Check out the Community Competition section later in the week to find out who won. The next competition is already up, RWD Hopper challenge can be found here.

Odd World Design by FirstHotLap, First place in the Official FM3 Fantasy Livery design competition.

Painters World Series: Congratulations to Armipotent Adam for winning the first round of the Painters World Series. Round Two is now open for submissions. You can read the contest rules and submit your entry here.

Project 3D: Apex Omega has challenged FM3 photographers to create an image that pops off the screen when viewed with standard 3D glasses using only the tools in-game. If you think you have the skills to meet this challenge then check out all the details here.

Worst Tune Ever: Evo Tuning is attempting to answer the question of who is the best driver in FM3. In order to find out, he has put together what he calls the “worst tune ever” to test your driving skills. If you are up to the challenge you can find the details here.

Image by Munky 777 - See this image and more in the Community Gallery

Slo Poke Subaru 22b: Slo Poke tuning collaborated with Jeebus Redwing in their newest release, a A600 Subaru Impreza 22b. In order to celebrate the release Slo Poke has announced a Hotlap Challenge on Ladera Full. Only the top three times will win, find all the details on the car and HLC here.

Drift Painting Comp Week 6: Congratulations to the winners of week 5 for winning week 5 of the drift painting competition. The week 6 submission thread is now open and accepting entries.