Steven Doherty of Cherry Valley, Illinois was announced as the North American winner of GT Academy 2012 during the finale of this year’s competition on Spike TV.
A registered GTPlanet member since March of 2011, “BICDRIVER49” came from second on the grid during the dramatic last race of the competition to overcome pole-sitter (and fellow GTPlanet member) Jett Chandler (“Jett_Racer“).
Since winning the competition in August, Steve has been quietly driving under the pseudonym of “Dan Mitchell” in various development racing series as he works towards the international competition license he’ll need to begin racing professionally in 2013.
As with all GT Academy winners, we’ll be closely following his career as he continues the evolution from gamer to a professional racing driver.
Congratulations to Steve and all of the GT Academy 2012 finalists on another great year of competition!
See more articles on GT Academy 2012 and Steve Doherty.
congratulations to Steven! all the best for the future. i followed the series with excitement and am pumped up for the South African finals which i qualified for
What a great deal for Steve but w/ all of the trophies he won before he won GTA he was going to make it anyway, GTA just got him there faster :tup:
Congrats Steve! Awesome to have met you and the rest of my GT Academy brothers lol. Good luck in all your future racing! Hopefully the rest of us bottom 16 will make it to Silverstone next year and one of us will be racing with or against you one of these days :D
Congrats Steve and best of luck when you’re climbing to the top. :)
Wow…. Great news out of the land of Linc… errr Road America!!! Congratulations Steven and good luck to you.
Congratulations and the best of luck.
Congratulations and good luck!
I wonder how the rest of the field that didn’t make it will be looked at by the racing industry. A lot of the other drivers have obvious talent and being on TV gave the scouts something to look at. Many contestants just need more laps under their belts to become great drivers in the future. Especially Eric…considering he wasn’t brought up in a family of race car drivers like some of the others and he made it as far as he did, I can see him behind the wheel as a career very soon.
Look at Sean Johnston.. Congrats Steve!
Don’t worry, nothing short of a plague will keep us out of a race car. A few of us have something in the works, we’ll keep GTP updated as our careers unfold. Congrats to Steve for a job well done! Now that the winner has been announced, we can actually keep up with his story!
Like I said on the show, it wasn’t a competition about potential! Trust me when I say that all of us there were VERY fast, and we are all so passionate about it that I am sure all of us will strive for sponsorship etc. Collectively we had the fastest race camp over any of the European, German, or Russian camps!
We ran an article a couple of weeks ago about GT Academy’s runners-up getting into racing
http://www.gtplanet.net/gt-academy-finalists-unsung-successes/
Congratulations!
Good job and good luck
Nice
Woah that’s crazy! This guy is from the area I live in!
Gratz, Steve!!! That Red Helmet is a great prize and a great opportunity to further your racing career. I’ll just have to settle for a racing wheel…Thanks Nissan and GT Planet!!! Now that I will soon be able to graduate from my DS3, I might hone my skills to compete in the next GT Academy.
They are selling refurb DFGTs on Newegg this week for nearly 60 bucks. Practice practice practice!
Nissan is sending me a new one. At least I assume the grand prize is new. I hope there isn’t a long delay with all of the Christmas gifts being sent out this month.
Wow a spoiler on the homepage? Really Jordan? I knew better than to check the GT Academy forums but what are we supposed to do if this is our homepage? It doesn’t air for another hour or so here, oh well, I will watch anyways and pretend like I didn’t know. Extremely irritated.
Congrats Steven.
I am sorry about that, I’ve had many show or sports results spoiled for me on the Internet and I know how you feel. As I said below, the Internet, TV, and time zones just don’t mix, but we’ll always try to have GT news available as soon as possible here.
Sorry for sounding harsh, I was just a little shocked, it didn’t really cross my mind that it would be posted on the homepage. I thought nothing would be posted publicly until it hit all time zones. Its all good though man.
Try setting your homepage to the “Forum” section of GTPlanet, that way when you log in you will not be on the “News” page.
Jordan, it may be a better idea to just put up “The GT Academy Winner is…..” and give the spoiler report inside the article itself, not the headline.
Congratulations Steven. When you won the dog fight I told my wife you were going to win it. Could see it in the eyes. Great race.
I pretty much knew too, I was setting my PR laps during the dogfight and he still smoked me by about 20ft per lap. Can’t emphasize how fast Steve was in that challenge, breaking ALL previous GT Academy lap records. Sucked for me but at least I can say he deserved it! [:
Great job Steve!
Never enough time for the “working” folks out here. I know I could hang but am traveling all the time :( oh well..
Congrats Steve – keep going strong.
And ruin it for the West coast guys….
GTPlanet is the last site I would visit if I knew my time zone was delaying the airing of GT Academy from the rest of the country and I didn’t want to know. Your fault.
Time zones, social media, and TV shows don’t mix! Hopefully this doesn’t ruin it for anyone.
I had it recording while I finished off practice for Sunday night. Didn’t go anywhere near the gtplanet app on my phone as I was sure to read something about it.