Ricardo Sanchez

Ricardo Sanchez, the 2014 winner of the GT Academy International event, was part of a driver squad that has won its class at the TotalEnergy 24 Hours of Spa.

Endurance racing is a war of attrition. That was certainly the case for the GT Academy team at last weekend’s Dubai 24H race, as the #123 car was met with numerous setbacks en route to an eighth-place finish in-class.

The race is on for the GT Academy team in Dubai right now. With a little over 14 hours to go, the team has already experienced the highs and lows typical of an endurance event.

GT Academy Team RJN has confirmed it will be taking part in the upcoming 2017 Dubai 24 Hours event, which will be held at the Dubai Autodrome, UAE from January 12–14.

Jann Mardenborough may have just missed out on the All-Japan F3 Championship title earlier this year (as well as the GT300 class in Super GT last month), but we imagine this must make a pretty sweet consolation prize.

Over the course of the past few months, the qualifying rounds of GT Academy 2016 have quietly taken place across the globe, as thousands of potential competitors took their best shots using a pre-release version of GT Sport. Six regions were earmarked for International Race Camp (Australia, Indonesia, Mexico, North Africa, Philippines, and Thailand), and after all the dust had settled, six finalists were selected from each to represent their team in Silverstone.

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.