Jose Gerard Policarpio Wins GT Academy Asia 2015

It’s one of the world’s toughest job interviews, for one of the world’s best jobs, and Jose Gerard Policarpio has shown at Silverstone that he’s the person for the task.

In GT Academy’s first exclusively Asian region competition, 30 hopefuls from India, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines & Thailand had come through the online challenge and national finals to take on the week-long physical and mental test that is the Race Camp. This didn’t get off to a terrific start for the Indian contingent as one finalist was unable to secure a visa and missed out altogether before the trials had even begun.

Over the next five days of racing, assault courses and crushing cars with a monster truck (yes, really), the hopeful racers were whittled down to five – one from each region – to take part in the famous GT Academy final race. Although this is not a winner-takes-all battle to the line, it has traditionally ended up this way with only Matt Simmons of Australia bucking the trend last week to win GT Academy International, so there’s quite some pressure to perform.

The grid for the final race was determined by a stock car race (in stripped Nissan Micras…) the previous day, so the five finalists lined up with Indonesia’s Andika Rama on pole, followed by Takuya Takahashi (Japan), Jose Gerard Policarpio (Philippines), Akshay Gupta (India) and Nathayos Sirigaya (Thailand).

Policarpio’s impressive start saw him pass Takahashi – who later retired after the car suffered a mechanical malady – before turn one and the rest of the race was all about whether Rama could fend him off. Policarpio eventually made the pass on lap five, but Rama didn’t take it lying down and shadowed his rival for the next five laps – nearly regaining the position on the very last corner – but in the end had to settle for second by just 0.2s.

This win for the Philippines is the first for an Asian driver at a Race Camp and with Matt Simmons brings the new NISMO Athlete count to two – ahead of October’s European Race Camp at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina circuit.

See more articles on GT Academy 2015.