Cars

Not to be outdone by the exploits of Jann Mardenborough and Lucas Ordoñez at Le Mans last week, the newest Nismo Athletes scored some more track success of their own in the Blancpain Endurance Series round from Paul Ricard.

The Nismo Athletes on board the Greaves Motorsport Zytek-Nissan had nothing to be ashamed about. Completing a 24 hour race in a 4th place class finish after a night long battle for the podium with a first timer on board – and doing the lion’s share of the driving too – is well worth a round of applause. But this morning they find themselves with an unexpected trophy.

Le Mans 2013 got off to a tragic start, as Aston Martin Racing driver Allan Simonsen was killed in an accident on the Tetre Rouge corner shortly after the start of the race. The thoughts and prayers of the GTPlanet community are with his family as we all mourn the loss of a very talented racing driver.

2013 marks a unique milestone in GT Academy. It’s the third successive year that gamers have taken to the track at the Le Mans 24 Hours, but this time they’re working together.

Nissan GT Academy Team RJN took victory in the Pro-Am class of the Blancpain Endurance Series race at Silverstone on Sunday.  The win for the No. 35 YouTube Nissan GT-R Nismo GT3 is the first class victory for Nissan in the Blancpain Series at the home of the GT Academy competition. The No. 32 GT-R GT3 retired in the late stages of the race with a technical fault.

Sunday marked the fourth successive entry in one of the world’s toughest circuit races for Kazunori Yamauchi. Since his first attempt at the Nürburgring 24hr in 2010, driving a Lexus IS-F, he’s driven a series of Schulze Motorsport-prepared Nissan GT-Rs, scoring class wins in 2011 and 2012.

The 41st Nürburgring 24 Hours gets underway at 17:00 CEST (15:00 GMT/UTC) today, with the #123 Team GT Academy GT-R GT3 26th on the colossal 176-car grid

2011 U.S. GT Academy champion Bryan Heitkotter has been featured in a short documentary as part of Polygon’s “Human Angle”, a web series which highlights important and unusual people in the video gaming industry.

In the busiest weekend of GT Academy racing to date, every single one of the “Nismo Athletes” was involved in a top tier international race series – including Kazunori Yamauchi himself.

This weekend saw the FIA GT  debut of the GT Academy RJN Nissan GT-R GT3s at Nogaro – and it was quite the eventful start!

Jann Mardenborough got the Nismo Athletes’ season underway with a three race round of the European Formula 3 series at Monza.

With the 2013 motorsport season getting underway, 2012’s final GT Academy champions have yet to be decided as eight Middle East and eight South African gamers head to a Silverstone showdown.

As part of a large Nissan Motorsport announcement at the opening of the new Nismo headquarters, the most recent graduates have had their 2013 seasons revealed.

In 2012 Jann Mardenborough became the first GT Academy winner to drive in British GT. After a season long assault on the title, including a momentous win at Brands Hatch, his RJN Motorsport GT-R GT3 came within half an hour of the championship only to be denied by the reliability of the brand new car. But the team have been denied entry of two RJN cars for 2013 because Academy drivers are too fast.

The GT Academy team has once again scored a podium finish in the season opening Dubai 24 Hours, bettering last year‘s finish by one place.

As I’m sure we’re all aware by now, the Dubai 24 Hours represents the annual “final” prize for GT Academy. The 2013 race is less than a week away from us and the 2012 winners have been allocated their seats for this year’s race, each looking to better last year’s podium result.