Gaetan Paletou

You’d be excused for calling the beginning of 2016 a rough start for most of the previous GT Academy grads. While veterans like Ordonez, Mardenborough, and Heitkotter all had their positions announced by Nissan in February – joined by recent grads like Matt Simmons – an alarming number of winners were notable for their absence. Gaetan Paletou and Wolfgang Reip were just two of the drivers that found themselves without a seat in the new year.

Eurosport TV recently began airing a special 20-part series that goes in-depth with the organizers, trainers, coaches, competitors, and winners of the GT Academy program.

The Nissan-powered Greaves Motorsport team took the European Le Mans Series LM P2 title today, after finishing in second place in a nail-biting season finale at Estoril in Portugal.

Nissan’s much-anticipated Le Mans challenger, the Nissan GT-R LM NISMO, made its race debut at the Le Mans 24 Hours this weekend. Such is the scale of the challenge to enter the top endurance class, Nissan set a target of getting one of it’s three cars to the finish of the 24-hour race.

We’re now well into the endurance racing season and one of the most challenging is upon us again with the 2015 Nürburgring 24 hours.

Once again, April has come round and that means that the European motorsports season has started in earnest. Fresh from their successes at the Dubai 24 Hours, the latest crop of GT Academy winners are making their first steps in a variety of championships – joined by more experienced NISMO Athletes as they start a racing career.

In just a few weeks’ time two more winners of the Nissan PlayStation GT Academy will start their dream job, racing a Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 in the Blancpain Endurance Series.

It’s been the prize for winning GT Academy for six years now, so this weekend’s Dubai 24 Hours shouldn’t come as a surprise to any wannabe-racer Gran Turismo fan out there.