Cars

The 24 Hours of Le Mans is finally here! This year’s race features not one but two drivers competing thanks to the Gran Turismo video game series.

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.

This weekend, Jann Mardenborough returns to Silverstone, the place where his professional racing career started almost exactly one short year ago.

Following up on their “Road to Dubai” series, which covered the development of all four GT Academy graduates as they worked towards this year’s Dubai 24 Hours, the Eurosport television network has now turned their attention to Lucas Ordoñez and Jordan Tresson’s preparations for the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

After 24 hours of all-weather driving and some unbelievable twists and turns, Team GT Academy safely brought home their #123 Nissan GT-R first in their SP8T class and 30th overall.

As reported yesterday, the 40th Nürburgring 24 Hours gets underway at 16:00 CEST (14:00 GMT) today, with the Team GT Academy car 47th on the 171-car grid – and first in the SP8T class.

12 months after he scored a class victory for Schulze motorsport, Gran Turismo founder Kazunori Yamauchi returns to the Nürburgring 24hr race but this time he has another famous Gran Turismo name accompanying him.

Jann Mardenborough, GT Academy Europe’s 2011 winner, has achieved his first pole position in international competition, less than a year after he first sat in a racing car. Even more impressively, he’s managed this feat at the Nürburgring and on his first visit to the track!

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.

While the rest of us wait for GT Academy to start next month, the winners of previous academies continue to make their names in world motorsports and demonstrate the success of the GT Academy program.

Announced this morning via Twitter, Lucas Ordoñez will shortly find himself driving a Nissan GT-R at the punishing Nürburgring 24 Hour race.

After relatively successful pre-race preparations for the GT Academy graduates, their relative fortunes took a turn for the worse come race day.

Following Jordan Tresson’s disappointing season-opener in the Sebring 12 Hour race two weeks ago, two more GT Academy graduates are involved in their own race series debuts this weekend.

2010 GT Academy champion Jordan Tresson was all set to make his FIA World Endurance Championship debut in the 12 Hours of Sebring this weekend, behind the wheel of Signatech Nissan’s new LMP2 car. Alas, it was not meant to be.

Following the GT Academy drivers’ successes in the Dubai 24 Hours in January, we brought you news of the three European drivers’ schedules for 2012. As promised, we now have news on Bryan Heitkotter’s plans for the coming season.

Following on from the earlier videos in the Road to Dubai series, Sony/Nissan GT Academy have now released a sixteenth episode, chronicling the progress of the drivers through the race itself.

Nissan Europe has today issued a press release detailing the campaigns their three GT Academy graduates will be driving in the 2012 season.

Polyphony Digital’s custom “stealth” race cars in Gran Turismo 5 are some of the most difficult to acquire in the game. Available as pre-order and Signature Edition incentives, they’re simply not available to the majority of players.