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.

Race Coverage

All Nissan factory-backed cars racing this weekend will be carrying a small black ribbon logo to mark the death of the spectator. Meanwhile the unfortunate driver, Jann Mardenborough – who was also taken to hospital as a result of the incident – has resumed driving duties in the GP3 test this weekend, topping the timesheets amongst his Carlin team-mates in 7th overall.

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.

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