Esports

It wasn’t all sunshine and smiles in Florida this past weekend. After a solid season opener the week before in Texas, Heitkotter and teammate JD Davison faced stiff competition on the tight street circuit of a cloudy St. Petersburg. While outright victory would evade the GT-R’s in Florida, the two drivers made points progress nonetheless, including a podium finish.

The Le Castellet circuit in France, better known to the motorsport community as the Circuit Paul Ricard, was this week’s home to the Blancpain GT Series as the official pre-season testing began for the upcoming season.

The Pirelli World Challenge season got underway this past weekend, bringing more success for GT Academy grads and Nissan’s 2016 motorsports teams. Bryan Heitkotter was bumped up to the top GT class in the PWC mid-season last year, where he ended the series in a respectable 10th place. For 2016 however, Bryan started on an equal footing against other professional drivers, and wasted no time establishing himself as a contender with an award-winning drive in Texas on Saturday.

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.

After 18 rounds of grueling high-intensity racing, the SMS-R Driver Network Championship has come to a close. Sim racers battled it out across the various disciplines that Project CARS has to offer, on some of the world’s greatest race-tracks, to fight for a generous prize package that included:

Saturday, January 23:

BROADCAST SCHEDULE

Back in the summer, a 26-year old postal delivery driver took part in a little competition you may have heard of: GT Academy. This van-driving man – by the name of Matt Simmons – would go on to win the International Region GT Academy competition. In the article linked, we mentioned Simmons was entering the usual post-Academy 3-month training program that Nissan puts each winner through, in preparation for the Dubai 24 Hours race in January. That’s not the case anymore, however.

Eurosport TV recently began airing a special 20-part series that goes in-depth with the organizers, trainers, coaches, competitors, and winners of the GT Academy program.

It’s been a long week, full of ups and downs, for 56 Gran Turismo 6 players. Back on the 5th of the month, the European edition of GT Academy 2015 kicked off in the hot and hazy climate of Abu Dhabi.

This past August, tragedy struck in IndyCar, when Justin Wilson was involved in a fatal accident at Pocono Raceway. It marked the second death in as many months in professional motorsports, with Jules Bianchi passing away the month previous due to injuries he suffered in 2014. In Bianchi’s case, it was the first death related to an on-track accident in F1 since Ayrton Senna’s in 1994; for Wilson, the first since Dan Wheldon in 2011.

The NISMO PlayStation GT Academy European Race Camp gets underway today at the Yas Marina Formula One circuit in Abu Dhabi today. The intensive, week-long racing driver boot camp sees 56 Gran Turismo gamers from 11 European countries gather in the United Arab Emirates’ capital city. They will compete for the chance to embark on Nissan’s all-encompassing Driver Development Programme and the chance to become a real racing driver, with Formula One technical genius Adrian Newey OBE on hand as head judge.