While GT Academy drivers are plying their trade the world over, the USA has become somewhat neglected for those wanting to go see the gamer-to-racer champions.
That’s soon to change though as original champion Lucas Ordoñez and 2011’s US winner Steve “Dan Mitchell” Doherty have been drafted into the Pirelli World Challenge for two races this August.
The events at Mid-Ohio (August 3rd-4th) and Sonoma (August 23rd-24th) will be the first on US soil to feature GT Academy drivers since the Petit Le Mans event at Road Atlanta last year.With Lucas scheduled to drive the SRF Nissan Nismo 370Z and Steve in the DWW Nissan Nismo 370Z, they’ll be pitted against each other too!
August is a pretty busy month for Lucas. Alongside these races, he’s off to Australia to test a V8 supercar and Japan to drive a GT300 GT-R (following a successful test) – after having already achieved two podia in two months in two disciplines in world-renowned 24hr races!
Meanwhile, the USA’s first GT Academy champion, Bryan Heitkotter, will make a return to the Doran Racing 370Z in two Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge events.
Bryan fared pretty well for overall speed in his partial season last year, so his absence from the Nismo Athlete roster for 2013 came as a bit of a surprise. Nevertheless, he will be back with the team for the 250 mile events at Road America (August 8th-10th) and Kansas (August 16th-17th).
See more articles on Bryan Heitkotter, Lucas Ordonez, Pirelli World Challenge, and Steve Doherty.
Well done winners!
Good to hear Brian is back in a car. And Lucas… well he is just doing great. But why the lack of GT6 news lately? Is PD working so hard on the game that theyve no time to give us any updates? If that is the case, Im fine with it.
I feel like Bryan has been getting the short end of the stick for all this. While we see news of the EU winners all the time in different kind of cars, Bryan seems to not be driving all that much for Nissan. Hopefully this will change.
Perrli World Challenge is a great series. They’ll have some amazing competition like Randy Pobts and variety of fast GT cars including Caddilac CTS-V Coupe Race Car.
How bout a quick “Top 3 US Circuits” by whoever wants to reply..
1. Sebring
2. Road Atlanta
3. Mid Ohio
-ok #3 is a biased choice, but who’s counting? lol
1) Indianapolis
2) Sebring
3) Belle Isle Park… Okay, that was stupid bias, so lets go with Road America, lol, but I wan to continue this list 1 more.
4) Walkins Glen (an incredibly unique high speed road course)
No Sonoma raceway huh?
Loved it in GT4.
1) Watkins Glen International
2) Sonoma Raceway
3) Mazda Laguna Seca
Race Circuits…
Road America,
Sebring and
Watkins Glen.
Street Circuits…
Chicago Loop,
Paris Night (GT2) and
Silver State Classic, Nevada
I’ll back you on Belle Isle Park…some of the best scenery on a track in the US.
AMERICAN CIRCUITS
1) Circuit Of The Americas – all variations (day/night/weather change)
2) Road America (d/n/w)
3) Virginia International Raceway – all variations (d/n/w)
AUSTRALIAN CIRCUITS
1) Adelaide GP Circuit (d/n/w) – with Clipsal 500 variation (weather change only)
2) Hidden Valley (w)
3) Gold Coast Indy Circuit (w)
PREVIOUS GRAN TURISMO ORIGINAL CIRCUITS
1) Red Rock Valley (d/n/w)
2) Midfield Raceway (w)
3) Rome Night (d/n)
Woops, forgot – Bathurst goes in the Australian list – ALL TIME FAVOURITE!!!
1.Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca
2.Watkins Glen
3.Indianapolis (Road Course)
Can’t leave out Barber Motorsports Park
The Pirelli World Challenge is pretty cool, I’ve been at the races the past 2 years at Belle Isle.
Never got a chance to thank you Famine for your coverage of Lemans a few weeks ago. Outstanding work bro.
Does anyone think we’ll see Sebring and Road Atlanta in GT6? Those two plus Watkins Glen and Road America would be hot.
I certainly hope so Blood*Specter. Epic would be an understatement.
One can only hope, Blood ;) the aforementioned circuits were high were at the top of my list for GT5. Daytona and Indianapolis were pleasant surprises though.
If PD had to drop a circuit for other US locales for GT6… I’d vote to drop Mazda Laguna Seca first because it’s been a part of GT for many consecutive releases and I continue to struggle there ;(
I can NOT think of one track to drop! However, those tracks mentioned plus Circuit of the America’s would be a great inclusion!!
The rendering of Daytona needs to be redone BADLY though. I remember doing an online NASCAR race at Daytona and while sitting in the pits before the race I noticed a “NEXTEL Cup Series” on the side of a building in the infield. Ever since NEXTEL merged with Sprint, it has been the “Sprint Cup Series” since 2007. That means the rendering of Daytona is from 2006 and one of my biggest disappointments in GT5 was the infield road course at Daytona. That wall in turn 1 absolutely NEEDS to be fixed. It’s ridiculous how the wall jarts out of turn 1, there is suppose to be alot of run off there and instead you can snag the corner of the outside wall??? I know it needs a wall to keep people from cutting but move it back and make run off. They also have us using the wrong bus stop. That bus stop was used back in like the 90’s, then it was for the motorcycles, now it doesn’t even exist anymore. We should be running the shorter bus stop. I was also disappointed that the infield was empty and it was missing the signature Ferris wheel. When you see pictures of the Rolex 24 the most popular thing to photograph a car buy is as in the infield loop with the Ferris wheel in the back drop. I wish it had time and weather change too, because the infield course is home to one of the 3 biggest endurance races on Earth.
Yeah, I’ve read about those discrepancies (Daytona) before. Going by what I’ve seen on TV, the infield does look empty. PD is well known to slap $&@! together, but I mostly wanted time and weather, more than anything else.
Something I noticed:
“The events at Mid-Ohio (August 3rd-4th) and Sonoma (August 23rd-24th) will be the first on US soil to feature GT Academy drivers since the Petit Le Mans event at Sebring last year”
I think you mean Road Atlanta instead of Sebring. Sebring is for the 12 Hour race ;)
Oh poo.
wheres the weekly rewind?
Terronium-12, who writes the Rewinds, is on vacation.
I didn’t know podia was a word XD
Always figured the plural was podiums
You are 100% correct on that! Sorry, Famine, you did make boo boo’s!
podia is the correct plural – the word podium is from latin.
Greek, but yes, the correct plural of podium is podia. “Podiums” is acceptable in some places, just not my places.
I might have moved the DeltaWing’s last race 500 miles, but I don’t done no grammar bad.
It IS latin though – the ancient greek word is podion.
I love coming here! You guys are wonderful ;)
Actually Famine, the DeltaWings last race in the US was at the Limerock ALMS race on July 6th with Andy Meyrick and Katherine Legge finished 32nd. Nissan and DeltaWing are not the same thing.
The new silver coupe is a pale imitation :D
I always wonder why Bryan Heitkotter hasn’t been active much in racing since he won the US Gt academy. Is it because of his age? I was thinking that Nissan might not want to put too much into him like the others because he is very late in starting a career or maybe there was some internal stuff going on, like perhaps he hast fulfilled some of his contractual obligations and so they have put him on the sidelines as a punishment. Of anyone knows please share.
I just didn’t think he was as good as the others…
But then again… who am I?
From what I have seen, he is pretty fast. Also, if you watch the US GT Academy 2011 (I think), he was quite strong towards the end and certainly was strong in the 370Z race. Also, what happened to Jordan Tresson?
Jordan Tresson’s not a Nismo Athlete any more, but he’s still racing. At the moment he’s driving for a Lexus team in the VLN series – we mentioned it a month or so since:
http://www.gtplanet.net/gt-academy-drivers-promoted-to-le-mans-podium/
Heheh. SRF. Good luck, guys!
Skid Recovery Force is forced on for him!!!:O
hahaha I was going to put the same comment ImmalovemaGTR
There was an article about this on the Speed website earlier in the week: http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/gt-nissan-gt-academy-stars-set-for-us-swing/
Tried to send the info along but the form for doing so was unavailable….
GT Academy is an amazing achievement, and a trophy for Kazunori and his dream, to make a game good enough to be a virtual training ground for real world race car drivers. This is a great legacy for a game that’s supposedly the spam of the racing game world. ;-)
Kudos to a bunch of guys who are living out this dream, and best of luck to both Lucas and Steve. Maybe a little more for Steve ;D
I still can’t wrap my head around how manipulating GT5’s “physics” has prepared these guys to be such good racers.
It is because the “physics” are some of the closest simulations to what an actual car does on an actual racetrack. It is not trying to be a crazy fast, unrealistic Fast and Furious type racer. Gran Turismo is replicating the actual mechanical engineering marvel that is known as the automobile. It is a measured and regulated sense of reality that once you fully immerse yourself, are able to become one with the vehicle and “Manipulate” it to do what you want around a track, just like a real racer. Racing is simply this manipulating of a machine to make it go over a terrain as fast as you possibly can.
Not GT5, though.
It’s conceptual experience. The simulation-like physics don’t hurt though…
Hotrails17 has it right.
Don’t feed this guy, if you catch my drift.
Guys who are really fast in the game can adapt to the sim physics and go fast – doesn’t matter if they are completely accurate to real life physics. They get in a real car and adapt to those physics and go fast. Its there ability to adapt quickly and go fast. How long did it take Ti-Tech to put down a time that you would have no chance of matching with new GT physics? I’ll guess it was on day 1.
Will Nismo TV broadcast those races?
They most likely will on their Youtube Channel
The replays will be on NBC Sports.
Couldnt have said it better myself bravo