Nissan GT Academy winners too fast for British GT

For those who say that video-game skills can't translate into real life, we'd like to point you to the case of Nissan GT Academy Team RJN versus the officials of the British GT Championship. The Nissan team was deemed too fast to compete in the national Pro-Am category.

In 2012, Nissan GT Academy champion Jann Mardenborough entered the British GT Championship as an amateur with Alex Buncombe as the pro in a Nissan GT-R Nismo GT3. They came close to winning the championship.

During the season, Mardenborough was too fast to be an amateur, but he didn't meet any of the higher criteria for the pro class. The situation gave the organizers no choice but to give him a time penalty, allowing the other drivers to catch up.

"I have a lot of admiration for GT Academy," said British GT Championship manager Benjamin Franassovici. "It has shown itself to be a great way to source raw talent and turn that into real racing talent as we saw in British GT last year with Jann Mardenborough.

“However, Nissan's ability to find such amazing raw talent means that we cannot accept their full-season entry for British GT in 2013. Their new recruits have very little racing experience so they have to be on the lowest performance grade. Their talent, going on Jann's speed last year, doesn't reflect this lack of experience, so it is not fair to put them up against our Pro/Gentleman grid, the basis of British GT3. Hats off to Nissan, though, and I should point out that there are no closed doors here."

Nissan's Global Motorsports director Darren Cox was both pleased and saddened by the news.

"We don't know yet if the new guys will be as fast as Jann, but British GT have decided not to take the risk," said Cox. "It's disappointing that we can't put any of our new winners into the British GT Championship, as it was a great learning experience for Jann. It's also very flattering at the same time, though. Being told you are too fast isn't something that happens very often in any competitive sport. We're working hard now to make sure our new graduates have a great race program this year."

By Jake Lingeman