Although GT Academy is now a worldwide phenomenon and requires the attentions of a cast of hundreds, a very small handful of people were responsible for getting the idea going in the first place.
One of those was Darren Cox, of Nissan Europe in those days. Darren has, this week, left his post as Global Head of Brand at NISMO, Nissan’s motorsports arm, to pursue his own projects with the IDEAS+CARS group.
Darren was one of the loudest and most passionate voices for GT Academy and has been instrumental in pushing the project from what seemed to be a speculation – can we turn a gamer into a racing driver – into what’s now seen as an alternative but legitimate way into world motorsport.
Darren’s departure leaves a vacuum of uncertainty around GT Academy and it comes at what appears to be a bad time for the competition.
This year’s main European contest had no regional finals for the first time in many years, cutting down on the number of qualifiers from the online component significantly but saving on the expense and logistics of organising the events.
Another unpopular decision was to exclude those who had been to previous national-level finals from participation in addition to previous Race Camp finalists. Though this prevents the reappearance of the same faces over and over again until they get through, it also dilutes the ‘gamer’ credentials of the qualifiers who, in the 7th year of the competition, may no longer be amongst the elite of the Gran Turismo section.
The choice to hold GT Academy 2015 at Yas Marina also seemed a little odd on the face of it. Though ideal preparation for the Dubai 24 Hours, a number of finalists reported issues with the cars running in September temperatures and some unusual and opaque decisions on driver elimination.
GT Academy also faces a challenge from an unexpected angle in the shape of GT Sport. This next iteration of Gran Turismo has an e-Sports component by way of two FIA-accredited online racing series with presentations for the winners held at the annual dinner alongside the champions of world motorsport.
With such radical changes already affecting GT Academy in 2015, losing a significant supporter like Darren could be catastrophic.
Will GT Academy survive the personnel change? Could 2016 be the last GT Academy – or have we already seen Romain Sarazin crowned as the last Academy winner?
Let us know what you think in the comments below…
See more articles on Darren Cox, GT Academy, and Nismo.
Just saw an advert on TV here in the UK, it was an advert for the PS4 freaturing people dressed as characters from games on/coming to PS4. One of them was wearing a GT Academy race suit with plain white helmet… Read into that what you will, but looks promising.
Can you find that commercial on YouTube and share the link?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0LtE_cbmGo
“A wonderful life of a PS4 player” Proof that GT Academy lives on.
Louie_Schumii from New Zealand was a finalist from this years GT Academy said on the GT Academy forum that he was told by a staff employee that next years GT Academy will be on PS4. I hope he is right!
Pretty safe conclusion. If GT Sport is out by GTA time, guaranteed GTA will be on the new platform.
It would be strange to promote the PS3 GT Academy and the PS4 GT Sport at the same time. It is really sad for me to say but I think GT Academy is now history…
I guess it will have to depend on what the FIA championship will be. Lets say they “take over” the GT Academy program that would be amazing. You get to drive something else than a Nissan. Go to other racetracks around the world. That would be awesome. If not hopefully there will be one more GT Academy only a lot more bigger.
Likely Darren left just to pursue his own dream but it’s also possible he saw the writing on the wall and left as the program was shrinking and possibly because it was becoming more reality show oriented vs. a mix of reality show and trying to find a truly raw talent. I’m sure the winners will do fine in their careers, but it seems GTA is turning into more of a tv show than a talent search, at least this year.
They could let the FIA finalists from GT Sport into the race camp stage of GT Academy and perhaps do the next GT Academy on GT Sport – that would help sell some PS4 consoles and could be a way of extending the beta test of the game to a wider audience.
When they added more people to the competition, but reduced the number of winners, I realized that the future was going to be changing.
However, I sincerely hope that someone will pick this up and run (VERY well!) with it.
But, the main supporter, not to mention one of the creators, leaving? Bad, bad sign……
We shall see, but I have to wonder who be affected, and how the FIA events will play into all of this.
Interesting news. Not sure how to feel about this.
This article reads like a bad voiceover novela cliffhanger.
“Will Timmy be able to finish his homework?!”
Surely the voiceover is good, even if the novela is bad?
I give it 4 James Earl Jones and 1 Ron Howard out of 6 David Attenboroughs.
I could honestly here the voice from Honest Trailers (Screen Junkies) reading those last lines in this article.
Maybe they will inspire the next generation of wanna be racers after the GT movie comes out…but for us pro virtul racers may fancy the FIA champianship…next year the extream gamer to racers may not be around …so some intresting characters will show up not as fast but more consistant race driver types…they are on the look out for a GT Hero….legend…Jann is the man…..raceing for the next 100 years…fancy growing up in a world without GT in it.
it would be like motor raceing was never invented…
Honesty it has to stop at one point or Nissan are going to have more drivers then cars to put them in. No one is going to like it but GTA can’t go on forever
Or they can just release some of the older drivers that aren’t up to scratch. (Sounds cruel but I’m sure that can happen)
I hope there’s still more.