It’s an unusual concept: becoming a professional at something through the method of playing video games. However in the motor racing world, this concept works. Wolfgang Reip, Florian Strauss and Katsumasa Chiyo crossed the line in their Nissan GT-R GT3 to win the Bathurst 12 Hour – Australia’s premier endurance event, to take a historic win for the GT Academy, which takes PlayStation 3 players away from their Gran Turismo games, onto the racetrack and turns them into professional racing drivers.
These racers have no previous motorsport experience before entering this fiercely contested competition, yet when they appear on the track, they feel as if they have 20 years racing experience at times, not two. It is strange to think that computer games can be used in this way. We do not see footballers born from playing Fifa, nor do we see soldiers born from playing Call of Duty, nor do we see plumbers born from playing Super Mario, but we do with racing drivers and Gran Turismo.
Anybody who plays racing games competitively in an online club or league on multiple platforms, like myself, will know that Gran Turismo’s physics are very outdated and by far from the best when it comes to realism, despite being ‘The real driving simulator’. With Assetto Corsa’s arrival and Project CARS evergrowing hype as well as other simulators like rFactor 2 about, the true hardcore sim fans will most likely be switching to these at some point, but many people still play Gran Turismo, and still will for years to come, meaning that Nissan will without a doubt find some talent from the entries each year for GT Academy.
As somebody who entered last year (and didn’t get very far, I made the top 10,000 in my country however), it is a very interesting thing to do. You can see where you stand on an equal track in an equal car amongst everybody in your country, and you can also get bragging rights amongst your friends and family. Those more successful than I was will get the chance to drive a real car on a real race track, and judges will then decide on who has the potential to be a proper racing driver in the real world. From there, the contestants will end up featuring in a reality TV show and eventually one will become the winner and the status of a GT Academy Champion.
Perhaps the most famous GT Academy Champion is Jann Mardenborough. Mardenborough stood on the podium at Le Mans in 2013 and graduated to the GP3 series for 2014, where he won at Germany and became a constant frontrunner by the end of his very first season in a single seater, which is an impressive feat. Other champions include Mark Schulzhitskiy, Steven Doherty, Lucas Ordonez and Reip himself, all of which have been successful in real world motorsports. With Nissan’s unconventional GT-R LM still having some vacant seats, these drivers are expected to at least be seriously considered for a seat, especially Mardenborough, who has a Platinum rating by the FIA – the highest available for endurance racing.
I believe that the main reason that this concept works is that games are getting much more advanced these days, almost to the point where they become to look more realistic than life itself. With games able to contend with variable time and weather systems (GT’s is really good) and being able to alter the setup of a car with everything from downforce levels to the camber on the right front wheel and so forth, us, the public are able to learn the basics this way, and knowing the basics always is a good platform for applying these things in the real world. It is also very cheap to fund. A PS3 and the game do not cost a huge amount these days, nor does a steering wheel when compared to a go kart and time on the racetrack. There also isn’t the repair bill when you forget the braking point for the chicanes at Monza at 300 kilometres per hour.
We are yet to see a GT Academy or any ‘gamer to racer’ make a serious impact on the mainstream racing world. Mardenborough has come closest to date, but I believe that we are not too far away from seeing somebody via this route make it to the very top of the racing ladder. It is a concept which, for some strange reason, seems to work very well, and is continuing to grow.
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