Cars

This past August, tragedy struck in IndyCar, when Justin Wilson was involved in a fatal accident at Pocono Raceway. It marked the second death in as many months in professional motorsports, with Jules Bianchi passing away the month previous due to injuries he suffered in 2014. In Bianchi’s case, it was the first death related to an on-track accident in F1 since Ayrton Senna’s in 1994; for Wilson, the first since Dan Wheldon in 2011.

Polyphony Digital has shared a new video covering the atmosphere and excitement of one of the world’s largest and most popular endurance races, the Nurburgring 24 Hours.

The #23 Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 line-up of Alex Buncombe (GB), Katsumasa Chiyo (JAP) and Wolfgang Reip (BEL) has won the Blancpain Endurance PRO Driver’s Championship. Third place in a nail-biting, season-closing race at the Nürburgring in Germany sealed the title win for Nissan after a season of hard racing in what is accepted to be the biggest GT championship in the world.

This year’s winner of the Gran Turismo Award at the prestigious Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is this 1952 Cunningham C-4R Competition Roadster.

Barely a weekend goes by on GTPlanet without us talking about one race or another where a GT Academy winner has gone from playing racing games to driving a real racing cars, so it’s a little unusual to find out that it happens the other way round too.

There’s another massive weekend of motorsport coming up and once again Nissan and GT Academy are front and centre.

Everywhere you look at the moment there’s a GT Academy driver driving something somewhere. Whether it’s the Blancpain Endurance Series in France, the Nissan Micra Cup in Canada or GP3 in Austria, there’s a guy in a white and red suit who used to play racing games for fun sticking it up the sharp end in a Nissan of one kind or another.

Since its inclusion in Gran Turismo 6 was first announced back in 2013, the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed has had a close relationship with the franchise. As many will recall, last year saw the in-game track updated to include the 2014 “Central Feature” sculpture at Goodwood – a soaring art installation that features different manufacturers and changes each year.

NISMO Athlete and 2014 Nissan GT Academy winner Nic Hammann kicks off his first racing season for Nissan in a big way, co-driving with Russian GT Academy champ Mark Shulzhitskiy in an RJN Nissan GT-R GT3 NISMO racer in the first-ever Blancpain Sprint Series event at Moscow Raceway in Russia July 3 to 4.

Nissan’s Alex Buncombe (GB), Katsumasa Chiyo (JAP) and Wolfgang Reip (BEL) took a commanding victory in Saturday’s 1000km Blancpain Endurance Series race, which ran into the night at Paul Ricard in France. This was the first overall Blancpain Endurance Series win for Nissan and the best possible warm up for next month’s Spa 24 Hours for Nissan GT Academy Team RJN.

Nissan’s much-anticipated Le Mans challenger, the Nissan GT-R LM NISMO, made its race debut at the Le Mans 24 Hours this weekend. Such is the scale of the challenge to enter the top endurance class, Nissan set a target of getting one of it’s three cars to the finish of the 24-hour race.

If you want to keep up with the entire Le Mans 24 Hours but none of the available TV or streaming options suit you – or you don’t have enough caffeine and matchsticks to last the duration – let GTPlanet help out.

In the latest episode of ‘Jay Leno’s Garage’, Jay talks tech with Chief Engineer Zack Eakin about Nissan’s Nissan GT-R LM Nismo, getting in-depth about the engineering decisions that gave birth to this remarkable car.