Lucas Ordonez

Join us live tomorrow (Sunday 8th May) on YouTube from 16:30 EDT / 21:30 BST / 22:30 CEST as GTPlanet’s top drivers race with Lucas (2008 Nissan GT Academy Champion) on GT6, and help him prepare for next weekend’s round of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup at Silverstone!

Last week we reported that Polyphony Digital’s CEO Kazunori Yamauchi would be returning to the Nürburgring in the lead up to the 2016 ADAC 24 Hours of Nürburgring. Sharing the driving duties of the #101 BMW M6 GT3 with Matias Henkola, George Richardson, and Max Sandritter, Yamauchi was set to participate in the top SP9 class under the Walkenhorst Motorsport banner.

Kazunori Yamauchi will be returning to the gruelling Green Hell this year. Polyphony’s man in charge took 2015 off, after an accident during the qualifying session the year before. In a surprising turn, however, Yamauchi will be slotting in behind the wheel of a Bavarian motor for the ADAC qualifier this weekend.

2016 will see Nissans of all manner of shapes and sizes take to the track all over the globe once more, as the manufacturer, aided by the NISMO Athletes, aim to top a hugely successful 2015 with 34 drivers across 14 series.

Every year, Polyphony Digital hosts an annual Christmas party at their offices in Japan with a wide variety of motorsports and gaming industry celebrities in attendance. This year, however, they spiced things up a bit, using the opportunity to show off what appears to be new concept artwork likely related to next year’s Gran Turismo Sport.

Nissan’s much-anticipated Le Mans challenger, the Nissan GT-R LM NISMO, made its race debut at the Le Mans 24 Hours this weekend. Such is the scale of the challenge to enter the top endurance class, Nissan set a target of getting one of it’s three cars to the finish of the 24-hour race.

Race Coverage

Another long and productive day at Polyphony studio with more testing and development for something really big!

Nissan is doing pretty much everything outside-the-box for their assault on the 24 Hours of Le Mans this year: they’re competing with a front-engined, front-wheel-drive LMP1 car (with wider tires in the front than the back, no less) that’s going to be piloted by two drivers who began their racing careers in Gran Turismo, Jann Mardenborough and Lucas Ordoñez.

GP3 race winner Jann Mardenborough was revealed as one of the drivers of Nissan’s LM P1 racing car at the Chicago Motor Show today. At the same time in Yokohama, Japan, it was announced that fellow GT Academy winner, Lucas Ordoñez, had also been selected to race the Nissan GT-R LM NISMO, along with NISMO racer Michael Krumm.

Bronze

GT Academy champion Lucas Ordoñez scored his first Super GT victory in the series’ latest round at Thailand’s Chang International Circuit last weekend. Lucas and his teammate Kazuki Hoshino held off highly experienced driver Jorg Müller in the Studie BMW Z4 GT3 car.

The EuroSport TV network has begun airing GT Academy: Masterclass to document the wild success of champions Lucas Ordoñez and Jann Mardenborough, while providing a glimpse into what the European and International competitors faced during Race Camp this year.

When Kazunori Yamauchi accepted the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge from Forza Motorsport’s Dan Greenawalt last week, he took the opportunity to pass along the challenge to two more people: Lucas Ordoñez, original GT Academy champion, and Ken Kutaragi, the “Father of PlayStation” who was instrumental in the design and development of the original console.

Race Coverage

Race Coverage