Last weekend was a busy one for Gran Turismo stars on real-world race tracks; in addition to Wolfgang Reip taking victory in the European GT Academy 2012, previous winners Lucas Ordoñez, Jordan Tresson, Bryan Heitkotter, and GT series creator Kazunori Yamauchi were also competing.
Lucas and Jordan were at Silverstone for the latest round of the FIA World Endurance Championship. After starting on pole in a very competitive qualifying session (10 cars were all within one second), Lucas and his teammates Martin and Alex Brundle encountered a string of bad luck and penalties.
They overcame these issues with a session of very fast drives in the six-hour race, eventually finishing 5th in the LMP2 class.
Jordan Tresson and the Signatech Nissan team also experienced many problems after starting sixth on the grid. Unfortunately, their issues were too severe for them to be competitive, ultimately placing them 14th in class by the end of the race.
Meanwhile, Kazunori Yamauchi was in Germany for the ADAC Barbarossapreis, a four-hour VLN endurance race at the Nurburgring.
He joined teammates Uwe Kleen and Klaus Volker in a race-prepped Lexus IS-F, with which they managed to bring home victory in their SP8 class. Congratulations to Kazunori and his team!
Silverstone WEC photos by Kevin Mc Glone of Red Square Images.
See more articles on FIA World Endurance Championship, Jordan Tresson, Kazunori Yamauchi, Lucas Ordonez, and Nurburgring Nordschleife.
Does kaz ever lose
Testing.
For those who like that livery that is the colors on all of the Lexus cars in the race. They all are that color of orange with black secobdary color. The black secondary color spots are the only difference between them. I was looking through some photo galleries from the race.
is that Lexus the same one that went up pikes peak?!
looks the same apart from the stickers!
Well it’s cool that Kaz won his class, but it kind of loses its luster when there are like around 26 classes, give or take. The SP8 class Kaz was in had only 4 cars in it and 2 of them failed. Still, it was apparently a solid race between that Lexus and an Aston Martin. If Kaz adds this one of his cars to the game it would be great if he pays tribute to his close competition and adds the Aston to :)
Looks like they finished 42 out of a field of 111 cars that where point scored for this round. Not bad.
Seems like their fastest lap was a 9:14.845 at an ave. speed of 158.113 Kph. For comparison the Audi R8 LMS Ultra of Raeder Motorsport which was the overall winner (in a different class of course) clocked a fastest lap of 8:09.221 at an ave. speed of 179.323 Kph. That’s not hanging around!
What can ya say, those Audi’s are fantasically engineered, lol. That Ultra technology is, personally, the most advanced technology I’ve seen on a race car.
I’m still on the GT3 spec cars in GT5! Even if it isn’t officially FIA licensed race cars, you can buy them from the dealer. Aston Martin, Porsche 911 (which could still be premium, just under RUF), Nissan GT-R, all those cars you can order from the factory. If it isn’t in an actual entered racing livery in an FIA race an FIA licence is not required. But didn’t Kaz need a license to put his 24 hour car in the game? Can’t we get more cars from his class? I know it’s not a huge class, but I sure would enjoy a couple more of those cars!
One question. Does anyone know if Lucas and Jordan will be racing at Interlagos, Brazil for the next WEC round days 13, 14 and 15 of September?
Don’t quote me on it but I think Lucas has more racing with the Zytek team, but I know ELMS canceled the rest of it’s rounds and made a deal with ALMS to invite all the ELMS guys to run Petit Le Mans for ELMS points. I think that Lucas will run that with Zytek but I’m not sure. The dates for Brazil and Petit are close enough idk how many cars Zytek is sending where, but I know they are doing Petit and I think Lucas is with them. I think Jordan is with the Signatech Oreca Nissan team at Brazil.
I see Amac. I wanted to know because I believe (not so sure) that my race ticket allow pit visiting, so I would like to meet one or both of them hahaha
When are we going to get that Lexus? with an incorrect sound sample, of course.
The lexus RM is the closest you’ll get. Kaz also raced that car to spec around the ring a few years ago.
i love forza so bad for making vinyls and real sounding cars! ive been a fan of them since forza 2. gt is all about the driving after all, forza is a pure motorsport sim that a lot of use to design the graphics for race/street cars. the driving doesnt compare to gt in a lot of ways but is still awsome to play.
This couldn’t have been more irrelevant if you had said your underwear is riding up.
it was meant to be a reply to magic ayrton
Forza has better bells and whistles like the vinyls, but the graphics an physics of GT are over heels better then Forza. The scale of the tracks renderings is way off in forza
GT having better physichs? Not with the terrible tire model it doesn’t,
More robotic drama eh? I have to say that I bought Forza 4 today and it is great fun.. I think GT6 will need to be extremely well thought out! I hope so, I love the GT series.
CCS :3
And whats funny is that when the Europe guys in had that interview Kaz said he had no plans for any races and yet he just did a race… Kaz you keep throwing lies then we will know GT6 is deleyed
There is a lot of info missing in this article. What exactly happened to the Academy drivers in bad luck, what were the penalties for? What were the severe issues for the other pair? How many other cars were in Kaz’s class? Where did he finish overall?
Not sure of the overall finish, but there were 4 cars in the class and 2 didn’t finish.
Sorry, I don’t have press releases with specifics. I just have to patch together bits of information I can find from social media posts.
Here ya go Jordan, the box on the right side of the page you can see all the pdf files for the entry list, qualifying, overall results, and class results.
http://www.vln.de/rennen.gb.php
Tresson had a puncture or something and then crashed the car coming onto the hanger straight with a few hours to go, he got out and the car was done so that was the end for them, I saw it happen on the big screen at the track.
The #145 IS-F is a looker. I wonder what other types of cars compete in that class and what are the rules, regs, and restrictions for it? Whatever be the case, I congratulations to the whole team including Kaz. Its always nice to see a new face (Lexus) win every so often.
race-modified cars with engines between 4.0 and 6.25 litres, mostly corvettes, 458s and so on. you’re welcome ;-)
Based on the comments, I see human drama….. He will starve people for wanting DLC cars that we will never see……
Sorta like never getting the R18, or the R-18 Ultra, or the R-18 e-Tron Quattro….. Nope…. We get more and more GTR’s……. I know that Nissan is a huge sponsor, but that doesn’t mean they really dictate 51% of what goes in here…. I think that PD and GT should try to get more sponsors….. Sorta like that post back in may about how 20% of there sales came from young people who play racing, driving, or any type of motor related video game…. If we see stuff like that, then GT and PD will have enough money to obtain the licenses to actually put those cars in.
People just think that you can put it in from an AFCAD design and release it for money or free even….. No, not at all. Just leave it for them to make the game, and use the actual GT forums to get your point answered…. Besides, how many GT or PD moderators/ admins really use GT planet??
Yip they just keep digging the grave don’t they? Its so sad :(
The new R18’s wouldn’t be in, they wont add those big level LMP cars into high quality GT5 until they are out of use. R18 TDI though…. (starts drooling)
I must say about Nissan though, they do have alot of cars in the game and we always get them, but in the actually DLC’s PD hasn’t done bad. That first one had all Japanesse cars, except for Challenger, but after that we have got VW’s, the Aventador, and the Aston Martin. But alot of the stuff added has been owned by Volkswagen Group, which owns VW, Audi, Lamborghini, and some others, so they have made good contact with the best company they could for European cars, since VW owns more of the European car companies then any other groups. They own Bentley to by the way, so in VW we cover German, Italian, and British cars.
Ya, i gotcha there… but it would be nice to see more premium LMP’s..(both 1 and 2’s)
Also, i am a bit of a Le Mans fanatic, i dont see the point as to why PD or GT added those speed bumps right at the end of the ford chicane as you go down the “front Straight” (not really a name for that section of track)… ticks me off that six little speed bumps slow me down 10 mph….
anyways… hope to see GT6 with at least the R15 and maybe the R-18 TDI, (since they used the Ultra now for Ultra light weight techology…)
The lexus is so freshhhh
Didn’t Jordan put his car in the barriers? Might be wrong as 6 hours are a lot of race to remember. Pretty sure though.
Nice job Kaz!! That livery in the IS-F looks pretty cool!!
Well done Kaz!
Man would I love to see a Zytek Nissan LMP2 car in the game. GT5 would have so many ties to that team. Lucas is driving, GT Academy winner. It’s a Nissan. Plus Martin Brundle and his kid, didn’t Martin have a special thing with GT5 doing time trials at the top gear test track? And that Zytek Nissan won LMP2 at Le Mans in 2011, that was big for Nissan. Lots of connections there :)
That was David Coultard.
Oh it was, thanks Shinshiki, wasn’t sure
Wow congrats to Kazunori on the VLN win!
Congrats Kaz! Shame about the GT Academy guys though, they seem to keep encountering problems with their cars respectively. If they had more reliable cars I think they could have even better results.
Great to see Kazunori doing something right for a change. : )
Guys, please stop saying “DLC Maybe?” everytime you see a car in the news that we don’t already have.
It’s really asinine.
What’s really asinine, asinten and asineleven is that we don’t get cars like this in game as DLC and that you’re actually telling people to stop complaining about it? Come on – we can all wish for it as DLC and not be shunned, especially on a game in which 12% of the cars is either a Miata or some sort of GT-R/Skyline…
Saying “DLC Maybe” however at every opportunity isn’t gonna make it happene any faster.
i hate the dlc talk too, fair enough ther is far to many miatas and skylines, far too many. fair to say PD programed the r35 ecu so im guessing they will swing off the skylines. they coulda slipped in the s1 quattro or sierra cosworth or some other legendary cars when being made.
Great to see Kaz making another victory at the Nurburg. Congrats. He loves that track to death though. :D Also, that car. Looks HOT! *v* Is it coming for the last DLC pack or is it coming in GT6?
Hopefully both but, unlikely for GT5 DLC.
IS-F racecar? Well that calls for more Nissan GTRs!
Hahaha…ha….ha….h……….
Nah, jokes gettin’ old now….
Regardless of the old joke, how many times in the news these day has the name “Nissan” in it?
And that’s getting old now to me..
No thats one nice car. Nice to see kaz in other cars rather then a nissan. :D
Would be funny to see Kaz racing a Chevy. I would be impressed then!
You know that he competed in an IS-F before at the 24h? He was also driving a Honda at Thunderhill: http://www.gtplanet.net/kazunori-yamauchi-on-track-at-thunder-hill/
Nice IS-F…..DLC maybe? Wishful thinking.
Lol, I had to place a comment about DLC on this thread before it inevitably appears. Congrats to Kaz on another victory at Nur.
Nice one!