Gran Turismo Champ wins an Actual Race in Nissan GT4 Team

Speedy online racer wins first real life race

Gaming has long been seen as an entirely useless pastime, incapable of preparing you for real life situations. Indeed, the nine million hours we pumped into Super Mario as kids taught us nothing about the complicated world of plumbing. Similarly, time spent cultivating friendships on The Sims has left us unable to comfort our loved ones if their problems run any deeper than adult incontinence or the unquenchable need to dance.

All that’s changed now, though, as one gamer’s tireless practice at Gran Turismo has lead him to a career in the world of real life racing. Lucas Ordoñez of Spain has become the ‘world’s first virtual to real life racing driver’, having won a competition run jointly by Nissan and Playstation.

25,00 gamers over 12 European countries battled to record their best lap time on Gran Turismo 5 PrologueT on the Playstation Network; 240 winners were then whittled down to 22 before a rigorous set of challenges deemed Ordoñez the cream of the crop. Racing in a Nissan 350Z for team Nissan in the GT4 race, Ordoñez topped the podium in Zolder, Belgium last weekend.

Nissan Europe’s Darren Cox said of the story: “Whatever happens now in the rest of the season Lucas has proved a big point. His first season of GT racing has delivered a win in an international race series again top line drivers, in top line cars.”

Team boss Bob Neville is looking forward to Ordonez’s future with the team, saying “the main focus is maintaining our second place in the [rest of the] Championship. That would really show everyone that a Playstation gamer can go from bedroom to championship contender in one year.”

As for us, we live in hope that our time spent on Mario Kart and our stockpile of spraypainted tortoise shells will one day prove useful.
source:t3