Andrew Evans

The European GT Academy final reached its ultimate conclusion at a sodden Silverstone earlier this afternoon, with Belgium’s Wolfgang Reip crowned the ultimate winner for 2012.

Following on from Jordan’s review 3 years ago, Wheel Stand Pro have kindly sent over a complementary pair of their upgraded v2 stands for GTPlanet to put through their paces. On review this time are their Logitech Driving Force stand (compatible with Driving Force GT, EX, FX and Pro wheels) and the Logitech G series stand (compatible with G25 and G27 wheels).

August is the big month for the race camp finalists from the four GT Academy regions – Russia, Germany, the USA and the eleven eligible European countries – this year, but Sony and Nissan have revealed a surprise for hitherto excluded gamers.

After a spectacular opening to the 2012 Spa 24 hours, the GT Academy RJN Motorsport team were forced to retire from the race with undiagnosed electrical issues.

As reported earlier in the month, 2009 GT Academy champion and LMP2 racer Lucas Ordonez has joined the RJN Motorsport Blancpain Endurance team for the Spa 24 Hours this weekend.

A new bundle version of GT5 has been announced this lunchtime for Europeans – the Academy Edition, to celebrate the fourth year of the Sony/Nissan tie-in of GT Academy.

Six UK and Republic of Ireland players have booked their places for a Silverstone return at next month’s Boot Camp, following two days of gruelling virtual and real driving and fitness challenges.

As announced by Nissan earlier this week GT Academy’s first winner, Lucas Ordoñez, will be reunited with his Le Mans teammates Martin and Alex Brundle. The trio will be driving the Greaves Motorsport Zytek-Nissan for the next round of the FIA World Endurance Championship at Silverstone on 26th August.

On the day GT Academy 2012 drew to a close the most recent graduate, Jann Mardenborough, showed the participants what it’s all about by taking a maiden win at the British GT series for RJN Motorsport – 365 days after he won Sony’s competition.

Following on from the Tweet detailing GT Academy‘s online participation, Kazunori Yamauchi has also Tweeted figures about GT5’s cumulative online racing to date – a truly staggering 36.4 billion miles in the 577 days since launch!

As the 2012 GT Academy qualifier draws to a close, the most recent graduates are in action again on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

GT Academy 2012 seems to have captured the interest of PS3 gamers as the number of unique players participating passed the magic 1,000,000 mark earlier this week.

The weekend of 9th/10th June once again provided us with a GT Academy winner double-header, as 2011’s champions Bryan Heitkotter and Jann Mardenborough were in action on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Thanks to an invite to the race day on behalf of Nissan and RJN Motorsport from Glen Gibson at Jardine International, daan and I were able to spend the day in and around the busy garage of the #35 Nissan Nismo GT-R GT3 – trying our hardest to stay out of the way. With the race over, Jann Mardenborough and RJN Motorsport team boss Bob Neville were kind enough to answer a few questions from us and Calvin de Freitas of Jardine:

Following yesterday‘s disappointing qualifying, with traffic issues leading to a 34th place start, the RJN Motorsport team were looking forward to a strong race in the familiar, wet conditions that play to the GT-R’s strengths.

Following the Gran Turismo network maintenance this morning (01.00 – 03.00 GMT/UTC), a small game update has been released.

Gran Turismo 5 users logging in today will have been greeted by the following announcement:

GT Academy’s 2010 champion Jordan Tresson gets a second chance at an LMP2 debut this afternoon as the Signatech Nissan team take to the track for the WEC Spa 6 Hours.

With the GT5 GT Academy 2012 now available to gamers around the world, GTPlanet was able to get an interview with 2011 European GT Academy champion Jann Mardenborough. Jann was kind enough to answer a few questions for all the budding racing drivers and GT Academy hopefuls out there, to give insight into the before, during and after of the internationally successful Gamer-to-Racer program.