With rumours swirling earlier this month, Wolfgang Reip has now confirmed the bad news (care of Daily Sports Car): Nissan has chosen not to renew his contract for the 2016 season.
Reip is one of the bigger success stories to emerge from the GT Academy program. The Belgian won the European section of GTA in 2012, and had a banner year in 2015. Reip helped return the GT-R to the top step of the podium at the Bathurst 12 Hour last year, while he was swapped out for Rick Kelly at this year’s race (where the team would grab silver). In addition, “Wolfie” snatched a win at Paul Ricard in the Blancpain Endurance Series en route to winning the PRO Driver’s Championship. Following such success, it was of little surprise when the FIA reclassified him as a Gold driver in November 2015!
The 28-year old also made history in 2014 by completing the first all-electric lap of the Sarthe circuit before the 24 Hours of Le Mans in Nissan’s ZEOD RC. Reip proved instrumental in the development of the unconventional racer, with which he shared co-driving duties during the race with Satoshi Motoyama and original GTA winner Lucas Ordóñez.
Wolfgang joins an increasingly long list of GT Academy graduates that no longer have seats with Nissan. Jordan Tresson, the program’s second champion, now drives for Lexus’ RC F GT3 in the VLN series. 2013 Russian Academy winner Stanislav Aksenov was part of the team that won the SP2 Class at the Dubai 24 Hours, but his contract was not renewed for 2015.
Over in the US, Bryan Heitkotter had a successful 2015 season in the Pirelli World Challenge driving a GT-R for Always Evolving Racing, which coincidentally did have GT Academy stickers thanks to a partnership with Nissan. Steve Doherty (2012 USA champion) and Nick McMillen (2013) were teammates last year, piloting the Doran Racing 370Z to solid results in the Continental Tire Sportscar Challenge. Sadly, the restructuring of Nissan’s motorsports budget saw the manufacturer pull sponsorship of the team, and the 2016 season opener at Daytona saw no Z-cars lining up on the grid. Both men are currently looking for driving opportunities – you can even catch up with Nick in his very own progress thread here at GTPlanet.
Contract changes are an expected part of motorsport, especially when considering each year of GT Academy has dropped more graduates off in a limited-size pool. The visibility that the program has provided for the natural talent these men have should not be underestimated, either. Unfortunately, in the wake of Nissan shuttering the LMP1 program and Darren Cox leaving the company, the latest news involving Reip continues a seeming direction change for the automaker and motorsports.
We at GTPlanet wish all of the guys the best of luck for 2016 – we’re rooting for you!
See more articles on GT Academy, Motorsports, and Wolfgang Reip.
I have a feeling that GT Academy is over and done with, which is very sad. Motorsport has slid into a money > talent paradigm, and GTA was just a little reminder that you don’t need to be the child of a former F1 driver or have a daddy worth 100 million dollars to be able to posses the skills necessary to drive a racecar.
With Darren Cox no longer at Nissan, they’re Motorsports programs are over and done with. Even Dino from SpeedHunters did a piece on how Nissan makes nothing but uninspiring, generic, plastic cars. The 370Z has been a dud, and the GTR is old balls now…neither with a replacement on the horizon. Other than Super GT, engines for LMP2, and what’s looking like one GTR (Choi’s GTR), Nissan won’t have much motorsport precence in 2016. We’ll wait and see what the PWC grid looks like, but we already saw CTSCC, and things aren’t looking good.
Renault returns to F1 and Nissan drops off the face of the motorsport planet….coincidence? I think not. Even with the official description of that business arrangement (I don’t really trust anything someone in a suit says), which states that Nissan and Renault operate seperately of one another (lol Ya right), the timing of it all smells really fishy at the least.
And not only is it Renault returning to F1 as a factory team (after being booted for cheating), they have a massive technical and PR hole to dig themselves out of after last year’s debacle with Redbull. You can hate on RB all you want, but they demonstrated they brought a chassis capable of competing at the front, and Renault failed to hold up their end of the bargin (Renault has gone on record saying that they admit that they didn’t spend enough resources on their F1 engine last year, and that they were trying patches and quick fixes instead of fixing the root of the issues).
I think it was Prost who said that Renault has about a 10 year plan for achieving succes in F1…..does that mean we won’t be seeing much action from Nissan for 10 years? Wouldn’t surprise me.
I guess Wolfgang won’t be able to reip the benefits anymore.
I do hope he finds another team.
Nissan Belgium is also probably running low on marketing budget. This is touched on in my 2015 GT-A Race Camp report but each graduates’ racing season overseas is usually paid for in half by their local Nissan with the remainder being covered by Nissan global.
Maybe make GTA biannual ?
To be honest, I’m not at all surprised. A bit surprised with the HOW, but not surprised that it is happening. Nissan, like all companies, has finite resources.
The departure of Darren Cox was a bit of a coffin lid, and this is just showing that the concept, while it has proven itself completely, just can’t be maintained in its current form.
I wonder if another company will pick it up, or if GT Academy might have too little support to happen again….
We shall see. Hopefully it WILL happen for many years to come, but (shrug) who knows….
Gt academy a thing of the past? I hope your kidding. I personally enjoy the academy challenges. I know I’ll never win, I’m too old for starters, but I like putting in the hours to finish some where in the top 300 regionally. I hope it continues.
Oops posting in the wrong place… See below :/
FIA competition.
Good point…. Don’t have PS4 Yet though :( I’m still gaming in the ghetto
Quite an outstanding list of results there, hope he lands a good drive somewhere and lock it in soon.
If Nissan can no longer support GT Academy, I wonder if another manufacturer would be willing to step up? I was hoping GT Sport would signal a greater crossover of game and motorsports, not just more online competitions.
Motorsport is about money not talent, and the GT Academy is just a big promotional stunt for Nissan and Sony.
And you say this while ignoring all the results of the graduates that came from this program. Also in case you haven’t noticed, All factory/works Manufacterer efforts ARE marketing to some degree, it ain’t just big bad Nissan and there “Big Promotional stunt”.
Let’s hope this gt Academy will be a thing of the past, there are to many fans still secretly awaiting another great gt game instead of this wasted time of resources for marketing purposes
Wasted times, huh??. Not if that means going to every single endurance race or championship, and win it. GT academy is the key of many people that wants to be race car drivers, and many people here wants to be in GT academy, at least once. Yeah, all of us want a new GT, but also we all want to be in GT academy
Hopefully they’ll wait to close up shop after I win next year.
Except PD had nothing to do with GT Academy apart from the software and the communication with the fans has been a problem long before GT Academy came along. If your gonna lay blame, know what the hell you’re talking about.
Gt academy a thing of the past? I hope your kidding. I personally enjoy the academy challenges. I know I’ll never win, I’m too old for starters, but I like putting in the hours to finish some where in the top 300 regionally. I hope it continues.
I partially agree with AmplifiedNL. I really think that PD shouldnt waste time, resources and money just to privilege a few and leave GT work undone, since GT is a work for millions people. However as mentioned it is Nissan which is investing on it, it looks like that PD doesnt need to work that much on this(very little actually).
About the driver Im going to be very honest to say that I dont care about.
I have only one thing to say.
nick98
I hope this is not a sign for the removal of GT Academy. There is too much dreams and talent out there…
I have a gut feeling it may be the end of it considering Nissan’s cutbacks and the focus on the FIA partnership in GT Sport. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar program shows up in GTS though as it’s a big draw for PD.