Nissan GT Academy Awarded Autosport Pioneering and Innovation Award

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and Gran Turismo’s GT Academy program has proven itself in the past years with 41 podium finishes, including a 24 Hours of Le Mans LMP2 class victory, from its winners. It is finally being recognized for its achievement by winning the Autosport Pioneering and Innovation Award for 2013.

Nissan Motorsport Director Darren Cox accepted the award from Formula 1 driver Paul di Resta at the event. The Pioneering and Innovation Award goes to the organization that Autosport believes had the biggest effect on motorsport in the last five years.

"There have been so many stories about drivers paying to be in F1,” said Cox. “Everyone in this room knows a driver who should have got there but didn’t make it but we’re finding drivers who didn't even know where they wanted to be. We're taking drivers from the virtual world to the real world and making them successful. The first year people thought we were lucky, and then we must have kept getting lucky!”

The next step for GT Academy is to take the program even wider and campaign winning drivers in regional series in the United States and Russia.

The GT Academy winners received other trophies a few nights previously when Lucas Ordonez and Peter Pyzera received trophies for first and third places respectively in the Blancpain Endurance Series, and team boss Bob Neville received trophies for the Blancpain team championship, Silver International GT Award and second place trophy in the FIA GT Series. GT Academy has been an unmitigated success.