Cars

The Le Castellet circuit in France, better known to the motorsport community as the Circuit Paul Ricard, was this week’s home to the Blancpain GT Series as the official pre-season testing began for the upcoming season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycaV3-_uha0

The Pirelli World Challenge season got underway this past weekend, bringing more success for GT Academy grads and Nissan’s 2016 motorsports teams. Bryan Heitkotter was bumped up to the top GT class in the PWC mid-season last year, where he ended the series in a respectable 10th place. For 2016 however, Bryan started on an equal footing against other professional drivers, and wasted no time establishing himself as a contender with an award-winning drive in Texas on Saturday.

This year would have marked the 100th anniversary of Ferruccio Lamborghini, the founder of the eccentric Italian marque. To celebrate the occasion, the storied automaker is producing an extremely limited production run of the Centenario pictured above. Unveiled at this year’s Geneva Motor Show, the Centenario’s design is built around a carbon fiber monocoque chassis and Lamborghini’s most powerful V12 powerplant to date, producing 770 horses, and can propel itself to 60 in a paltry 2.8 seconds.

As the automotive world prepares for one of the biggest events on the calendar – the Geneva Motor Show, opening to the public this Thursday – Bugatti has taken an early lead in buzz by unveiling the dramatic new Chiron.

2016 will see Nissans of all manner of shapes and sizes take to the track all over the globe once more, as the manufacturer, aided by the NISMO Athletes, aim to top a hugely successful 2015 with 34 drivers across 14 series.

“You’re going to rally school!”

Alpine showed off the latest iteration of their planned return to road car production yesterday in Monaco. Starting with the A110-50 concept of 2012, followed by a certain Vision Gran Turismo creation last year, and the Alpine Celebration model later in 2015, we’ve now landed at the rather confusingly-titled Alpine Vision.

With rumours swirling earlier this month, Wolfgang Reip has now confirmed the bad news (care of Daily Sports Car): Nissan has chosen not to renew his contract for the 2016 season.

Australia’s prime racing circuit hosted an absolute thriller over the weekend which saw Tekno McLaren take the title, despite harsh competition from defending champions Nissan and a few issues faced along the half-day event. The driver team of Shane Van Gisbergen, Alvaro Parente and Jonathon Webb faced a car break-down and drive-through penalty, which threatened their chances of domination by pushing them down to 3rd in the closing stages of the endurance race.

A fight to the finish was what fans wanted last weekend, and receive one they certainly did. As the season opener, the Daytona 24 served as an excellent sign of things to come, a day-long sprint with record-setting wins in the Prototype and GTLM categories.

On January 23rd Gran Turismo was presented with the Golden Marker Special Award at this year’s Japan Car Design Awards ceremony being held at The Gallery Too in the Minato district of Tokyo, Japan.

This weekend sees the international motorsport season kick off with a bang, as the 54th running of the Rolex 24 at Daytona starts the ball rolling for another bumper year of global sportscar action. The twice round the clock Florida classic will be the first event for IMSA’s newly renamed WeatherTech Sportscar Championship, as a grand total of 54 cars, many of which are brand new additions to the field, take the green flag on Saturday afternoon.

Last November, Bugatti announced that the Veyron replacement would be known as Chiron. Named after the dominating driver of the 20’s and 30’s, Louis Chiron, the car is expected to utilize a variation on the Veyron’s immensely powerful W16 quad-turbo heart. Now, a new report has surfaced alleging the car will continue the modern Bugatti tradition of setting insanely high top seeds.

Back in the summer, a 26-year old postal delivery driver took part in a little competition you may have heard of: GT Academy. This van-driving man – by the name of Matt Simmons – would go on to win the International Region GT Academy competition. In the article linked, we mentioned Simmons was entering the usual post-Academy 3-month training program that Nissan puts each winner through, in preparation for the Dubai 24 Hours race in January. That’s not the case anymore, however.

This guest contribution is by Bryan Heitkotter, 2011 United States GT Academy Champion. As the first US GTA graduate, Bryan has driven a wide variety of vehicles over the years, from the wild Juke-R to the GT3 GT-R. He’s also shared the wheel with fellow GT Academy pupil Nick McMillen. Here, Bryan recounts his experience at the 2015 NISMO Festival.