THE Nissan Playstation GT Academy qualifying process is now live!
The 2013 competition is now under way on an exclusive downloadable demo of the new Gran Turismo 6 game for PlayStation 3.
The challenges that could open the door to a real-life racing career with Nissan remain open until Sunday, July 28 at 11.59pm for GT Academy competitors, while the demo itself will remain available to play until August 31.
Demonstrating how the award-winning virtual-to-reality contest has successfully challenged the traditional, expensive route into motorsport and discovered new talent, two former champions, Lucas Ordoñez and Jann Mardenborough, both raced at the recent Le Mans 24 Hours in a Nissan-powered LMP2 car, recording an impressive fourth-place finish in class.
GT Academy 2013 is expected to be the biggest yet, with more countries participating and the allure of a first glimpse at the exclusive GT6 demo making it more attractive than ever for racing driver hopefuls to have a go.
The innovative co-operation between Nissan and Sony Computer Entertainment has attracted more than two million entrants since its inception in 2008, and created a number of successful racing drivers now competing for Nissan in top-level international motor sport.
The online competition will lead to the fastest gamers being invited to the National Final events where they will be challenged on the game as well as in real cars. From there, the action switches to the famous Race Camp at Silverstone, with the winner there set to potentially join the elite band of Nismo athletes.
Greatest race in the world
GT Academy Europe 2013 includes France, Italy, UK, Spain, Portugal, Benelux, Nordics (Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway) and CEE (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia). The USA, Russia and Germany will again each have standalone GT Academy competitions.
Nissan’s Director of Global Motorsport, Darren Cox, said: ‘At Le Mans, two former winners of GT Academy lined up in the Nismo-powered Greaves Motorsport Zytek-Nissan LMP2 car to compete in arguably the greatest race in the world.
‘Their impressive fourth-place finish shows the phenomenal success of the GT Academy programme.’
Eligible entrants within the participating countries will need a Sony Entertainment Network account and access to a PlayStation3 connected to the internet. They can download the free qualifying GT6 demo from the PlayStation Store, with no ownership of the Gran Turismo game required. People without a PS3 can enter the competition via a series of GT Academy Live Events that will be promoted by PlayStation and Nissan locally.