- 15,533
- Cairo, Egypt
- GTP_SEMS
This thread has been long overdue, I've been asked by several people to do this but alas I got caught up in college (very tough semister) and the fact that I'm lazy. I apologize for not writing this before fellow GTPers did this year's European gtacademy. I'll keep it short-ish and will probably edit it more as I recall other stuff but anyway let's get cracking.
My name is Ali "sems" samy, a 21 year old egyptian Playstation and GT fan, I qualified to represent Northafrica (Egypt, Algeria and Morroco.
Anyway a disclamer it's been years since I drove a manual transmission cars, aside from a few karting track days for fun I have zero racing experience so any racing knowledge I had was 100% virtual.
Let's get down to the important bit.
You'll need to know one very important thing, it was a bit of a given but I atleast wasn't sure it is that evident to that degree, this is a reality TV show, it's primary goal aside from adding a driver to Nissan's family is to get big views to sell Nissan cars, this is what pays the bills so that is understandable.
You don't have to be the best driver to win, I've had big issues with my gear shifting due to the lack of my experience, which is why my best day was the first when most of the cars we drove were paddle shifted. Anyway let's get to the contreversy (no I don't mean my spelling), on the first day it was all time trials on different cars, anyway by the next day we get to know who did best, we were a team of six and although aside from one event a maximum of 3 were allowed on track at once, however at the end of the day we had an idea about our speeds, they would only tell us who the fastest two were the next day and we had it narrowed down to 3 of us (in our opinions) and we also knew who was the slowest (even the guy himself agreed he is the slowest), the results however were a bit of a shock, I was the fastest (not unexpected) but the guy we all were sure was the slowest (I even lapped him in an event) was second fastest. Playing the devil's advocate here but ofcourse seeing something isn't the same as collecting lap times but it was the first 'weird' thing to happen.
What was even more strange is we got told the fastest two will be safe regardless of the results in the fitness test the following day, however one of the top 2 from mexico got eliminated after his team lost the fitness challenge.
Also the decision regarding who the seconf person from Team NA will be eliminated was changed suddenly at midnight the day before the announcment.
Now on to the TV side of things, you do a lot of interviews (and I mean a lot) and the cameras are very in your face (an occasion where one of my team mates asked them to stop filming so that he can shout at another who was being an utter 🤬 was proof of that (the camera crew ignored him and filmed the whole thing) but you might get used to it.
The challenges that were made for TV were an issue, the buggy and monster truck challenges in particular were in my opinion useless in picking out a driver (weirdly team USA opted out of the Monster truck challenge and did another one).
Now all of that did not affect me but the last team challenge was a bit of a sham, it was the stock car challenge, now before the race we were clealy instructed that in case of yellow flags you do not exceed 10-20 miles and hour. During the race while I was in second some yellow flags were out, now I did lower my speed immediatly as to follow regulation also we decided to do the driver swap then under the yellows, the problem was this was a bit early in the race, so while I was entering the pits they thought I was retiring so they stopped me in the wrong area losing valuable time, but the main thing was that all the other teams ignored the yellow flag completly and not one of them was penalized, all of this meant we were done for and we finished fourth.
Finally as I'm sure you know, team turkey won the last race not team Australia but the winner was crowned the Aussie not the turk HOWEVER, I've spoken to several instructors and they all said Matt was the fastest through out the days, that plus the fact the Turkish guy didn't speak any English (they care a lot about this) meant it was hard to pick the Turk.
Now there are some issues but in my honest opinion I don't think they favored anyone, and like I said I was on the wrong end of some decisions, but the things to know as you're preparing for next year's gtacademy are.
Nissan have been trying to reduce the number of drivers they get (they only have so many seats) so you need to practice a lot because they need to be impressed, spend whatever money you can and learn as much as you can from videos or track day vets, etc....
This is a TV show, not all challenges are designed to pick the best driver in general, work on how to handle pressure and reactions time.
In the end, I again apologize for not writting this before as I felt whoever goes there can benefit from this information but hopefully the 2016 candidates will learn something valuable. And please feel free to ask me anything else..... except for why do you hate standard cars so much
My name is Ali "sems" samy, a 21 year old egyptian Playstation and GT fan, I qualified to represent Northafrica (Egypt, Algeria and Morroco.
Anyway a disclamer it's been years since I drove a manual transmission cars, aside from a few karting track days for fun I have zero racing experience so any racing knowledge I had was 100% virtual.
Let's get down to the important bit.
You'll need to know one very important thing, it was a bit of a given but I atleast wasn't sure it is that evident to that degree, this is a reality TV show, it's primary goal aside from adding a driver to Nissan's family is to get big views to sell Nissan cars, this is what pays the bills so that is understandable.
You don't have to be the best driver to win, I've had big issues with my gear shifting due to the lack of my experience, which is why my best day was the first when most of the cars we drove were paddle shifted. Anyway let's get to the contreversy (no I don't mean my spelling), on the first day it was all time trials on different cars, anyway by the next day we get to know who did best, we were a team of six and although aside from one event a maximum of 3 were allowed on track at once, however at the end of the day we had an idea about our speeds, they would only tell us who the fastest two were the next day and we had it narrowed down to 3 of us (in our opinions) and we also knew who was the slowest (even the guy himself agreed he is the slowest), the results however were a bit of a shock, I was the fastest (not unexpected) but the guy we all were sure was the slowest (I even lapped him in an event) was second fastest. Playing the devil's advocate here but ofcourse seeing something isn't the same as collecting lap times but it was the first 'weird' thing to happen.
What was even more strange is we got told the fastest two will be safe regardless of the results in the fitness test the following day, however one of the top 2 from mexico got eliminated after his team lost the fitness challenge.
Also the decision regarding who the seconf person from Team NA will be eliminated was changed suddenly at midnight the day before the announcment.
Now on to the TV side of things, you do a lot of interviews (and I mean a lot) and the cameras are very in your face (an occasion where one of my team mates asked them to stop filming so that he can shout at another who was being an utter 🤬 was proof of that (the camera crew ignored him and filmed the whole thing) but you might get used to it.
The challenges that were made for TV were an issue, the buggy and monster truck challenges in particular were in my opinion useless in picking out a driver (weirdly team USA opted out of the Monster truck challenge and did another one).
Now all of that did not affect me but the last team challenge was a bit of a sham, it was the stock car challenge, now before the race we were clealy instructed that in case of yellow flags you do not exceed 10-20 miles and hour. During the race while I was in second some yellow flags were out, now I did lower my speed immediatly as to follow regulation also we decided to do the driver swap then under the yellows, the problem was this was a bit early in the race, so while I was entering the pits they thought I was retiring so they stopped me in the wrong area losing valuable time, but the main thing was that all the other teams ignored the yellow flag completly and not one of them was penalized, all of this meant we were done for and we finished fourth.
Finally as I'm sure you know, team turkey won the last race not team Australia but the winner was crowned the Aussie not the turk HOWEVER, I've spoken to several instructors and they all said Matt was the fastest through out the days, that plus the fact the Turkish guy didn't speak any English (they care a lot about this) meant it was hard to pick the Turk.
Now there are some issues but in my honest opinion I don't think they favored anyone, and like I said I was on the wrong end of some decisions, but the things to know as you're preparing for next year's gtacademy are.
Nissan have been trying to reduce the number of drivers they get (they only have so many seats) so you need to practice a lot because they need to be impressed, spend whatever money you can and learn as much as you can from videos or track day vets, etc....
This is a TV show, not all challenges are designed to pick the best driver in general, work on how to handle pressure and reactions time.
In the end, I again apologize for not writting this before as I felt whoever goes there can benefit from this information but hopefully the 2016 candidates will learn something valuable. And please feel free to ask me anything else..... except for why do you hate standard cars so much
Last edited:
Hopefully I can stop the Aussies for a consecutive victory and stand for 'murica. (If I can get that far, I hope.) 
