Nissan wins the Bathurst 12 Hour with GT Academy drivers behind the wheel

TWO years ago they were just playing PlayStation. Yesterday they beat the world’s best drivers at Mount Panorama. This is how they did it.

THREE years ago they were just playing Gran Turismo on their PlayStation. Yesterday they beat the best in the world to win the Bathurst 12 Hour as the Nissan GT-R became the new king of the Mountain.

Before yesterday’s race, if you asked any of the punters at Australian motorsport’s holy land, Mount Panorama, none would have confidently predicted that the Nissan GT-R could win one of the world’s best races.

How could they? They had an experienced, but crash-proned Japanese driver and two blokes from Europe who used to be gamers. They would be racing against the best drivers in the world, at one of the world’s most difficult race tracks.

INSIDE NISSAN’S GT ACADEMY

But 12 hours, 20 safety cars and a kangaroo on track later, the Nissan Motorsport GT-R, with its two GT Academy drivers proved the world wrong.

Florian Strauss congratulating his teammate after winning the Bathurst 12 Hour.

Wolfgang Reip, the winner of the 2012 European GT Academy competition started the race for Nismo, driving a mammoth stint of nearly three hours. That included a moment where he overtook several cars down the famous Conrod Straight at over 250km/h leaving the commentators and spectators across the world in complete awe.

While Florian Strauss, the 2013 German GT Academy winner called off his holiday in Thailand early after receiving the call to race when the team’s original driver Alex Buncombe stayed in the UK after his wife was overdue for their first child. The big German had a frustrating time often stuck behind the safety car, but once he was racing, he more than held his own against world champion drivers.

The team’s other driver Katsumasa Chiyo also became a fan favourite for everyone watching the race. He was blindingly quick, incredibly genuine and polite in his interviews and produced some of the best four minutes of driving you will ever see to win the race for his team.

The win in Bathurst was the first ever for both Strauss and Reip, both of whom now have more ammo to throw against drivers who look down on the GT Academy graduates.

Strauss and Reip on late last week doing the track walk.

“Other races laugh at us [GT Academy drivers], but even they use simulators like ours to train,” Reip told news.com.au.

“I never thought in my life I would be in Australia, let alone racing here,” he said.

While Strauss felt very much the same, telling news.com.au “it’s just all my dreams coming true.”

“It’s a bit of a hidden program we need to do more with, as you can see the quality of drivers it’s producing,” said Nissan Australia CEO when asked how he feels about the GT Academy.

“I think we probably underestimate what it’s like for a guy who two years ago didn’t have a racing license and is now racing in the dark at Mount Panorama.”

Why play on PlayStation when you could drive a real race car?

The brain child of Darren Cox, Nissan’s global motorsport director, the GT Academy is an international competition that gives Gran Turismo players the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a real-life professional driver.

Any player who can prove their driving skills in the virtual world can compete on a real track in a real car.

The prize? A $1 million contract to race for Nissan Motorsport across the world.

The program has been nothing but a success, with inaugural winner Lucas Ordonez now a formidable force in international motorsport for Nissan, winning some of the most coveted races in the world at tracks like LeMans, Spa and Germany’s Nurburgring.

The current poster boy for GT Academy though is 22-year old Brit Jann Mardenborough.

From GT Academy to GP3 racing.

Since winning GT Academy in 2011, he has gone from strength to strength and currently races in GP3, the Formula 1 feeder series. He has even signed a contract to Red Bull’s Formula 1 development program, the same program that current F1 drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel went through.

“If you had no experience at all at driving anything in real life, and you had a pedal setup in a rig and had Gran Turismo 6, you could jump from that into a real car, and drive it very near the limit or on the limit,” Mardenborough told news.com.au at the GT Academy International Race Camp in Silverstone last year.

While the drivers may have got their foot in the door with video games, they have to do so much more to prove their driving worth. All the challenges at race camp are devised by some of the best brains in international motorsport and are designed to separate the boys from the men, and then to separate those who think they want it from those who really want it.

Signs are looking good for the program to return to Australia this year, with Mr Emery telling news.com.au that Nissan Australia was hoping to bring the program back to Australia this year, but was not able to confirm 100 per cent that it was locked in.

Originally published as Nissan wins the Bathurst 12 Hour with GT Academy drivers behind the wheel