GT Academy 2013 winner announced!

Hello Gran Turismo fans. So, GT Academy continues to go from strength to strength, and after a fantastic European Race Camp we now have a winner.

My congratulations go to Miguel Faisca, a 24-year-old student from Lisbon, Portugal. I wish him the best of luck as he embarks on one of the most advanced Driver Development Programmes in the world with the GT Academy team and Nissan, in advance of a full racing season in a Nissan GT-R Nismo GT3 next year.

He’ll also become an ambassador for Gran Turismo and joins an impressive list of former champions who are doing extremely well in their racing careers.

This year, 42 European gamers came to Silverstone to start putting all of the skills they have developed in Gran Turismo to good use behind the wheels of real Nissan racing cars.

The competitors and their high-profile mentors and judges – including former F1 drivers Johnny Herbert, René Arnoux, Stefan Johansson and Tonio Liuzzi – had a chance to drive the Silverstone circuit on a special GT6 demo.

Apparently the competition got pretty intense between the mentors and judges! In a sort of reverse GT Academy, the gamers were teaching the real racing drivers what to do and, by all accounts, it was pretty successful. Tony Liuzzi and Nissan driver Alex Buncombe were putting in some lightning fast laps in the 2012 Nissan Deltawing! Tonio eventually edged it with a 1’44.282 – you’ll have to wait until the release of GT6 in December to try and match it.

As for the competitors, this year’s standard was extremely high. Gamers now come to Race Camp very well prepared and so the decisions get harder each year. Of course, all of the competitors had done plenty of virtual laps around Silverstone on the GT6 qualifying demo.

As always, everyone involved in the GT Academy programme has done a great job. This was the biggest Race Camp so far, but it ran as smoothly as ever and I think all of the competitors will have had a great time driving some stunning cars on a fantastic and very famous race track.

To everyone else who took part in GT Academy – all 765,000 of you from around Europe – thanks again. Here’s to further success for the programme. There really is nothing else like it in existence and the Nismo Athletes such as Lucas, Wolfie and Jann are living proof that it works.

A final word of thanks to our partner in the programme, Nissan. Their ongoing commitment to the racing programme has made a huge difference to the growth and success of GT Academy.

The GT Academy TV programme following the exploits of our competitors is coming soon, so keep an eye on the GT Academy Facebook page to see when and where it will be aired in your country.