Blancpain Endurance Series

This guest contribution is by Nick McMillen, 2013 United States GT Academy Champion. This is the account of his journey as one of the newest Nismo Athletes. Look out for future articles from our racing driver contributor coming soon as he experiences and progresses through his professional career.

With both the Pro-Am driver and team championship titles captured in 2013, the Nissan GT Academy Team RJN will mount their defence of the Blancpain Endurance Series at Monza this weekend.

This guest contribution is by Nick McMillen, 2013 United States GT Academy Champion. This is the account of his journey as one of the newest Nismo Athletes. Look out for future articles from our racing driver contributor coming soon as he experiences and progresses through his professional career.

1000km in the Black Forest – that’s all that stands between GT Academy and two GT3 world titles.

Image courtesy of Nissan.

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.

Images courtesy of Nissan & European F3.

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.

There’s been a lot of attention (and rightfully so!) around winner of the first GT Academy, Lucas Ordonez, after it was announced he’d be competing in the 2011 ILMC this year. However, last year’s GT Academy winner, Jordan Tresson, is also steadily making his way up the racing ladder, running in this year’s Blancpain Endurance Series – a European championship which includes the challenging 24 Hours of Spa.