Spanish Formula 1 star Carlos Sainz Jr is officially a brand ambassador for October’s GT Sport. The announcement comes courtesy of the PlayStation Spain Instagram account, in a post last week. Sony also released a blog post further detailing the partnership.
Sainz Jr Represents The PlayStation Generation
The Toro Rosso driver is set to be the “image” for the game in Spain. As described in the blog post, Carlos is considered part of “Generation PlayStation”, having grown up with racing games like Gran Turismo inspiring his real world accomplishments. Even more recently, Sainz Jr provided feedback on the handling and physics in the GT Sport beta.
Despite this partnership and competing at the highest level of open wheel racing, Carlos is just as curious as us regarding the FIA portion of the game. Even as a partner, Sainz appears to have no further knowledge than the general public. It appears PlayStation and Polyphony Digital remain tight lipped on the certified championships but with release imminent, more details should emerge soon.
Given the regional nature of this news, we don’t expect Sainz to have a worldwide association with the game. The press release being in Spanish indicates this is a marketing push for Spain and not GT Sport overall.
With the FIA’s involvement, perhaps other yet-to-be-revealed drivers will push the game in other countries. For now though, Sainz Jr becomes the first non-GT Academy graduate to market GT Sport on the road to release. Of course, he isn’t the only Spaniard: he’ll be working alongside countryman Lucas Ordóñez, the very first Academy winner.
Although these types of deal tend to be more superficial than substantial, it’s still positive to see Gran Turismo continuing to have big brand-pulling power, and Sainz hands-on approach can only help. With his F1 career still in the formative stages, Sainz is a bright young talent to have involved with Sport. We look forward to seeing what else comes from this partnership.
