Sony’s Gran Turismo inspired reality television series sees another season come to a close as Pete Doherty is awarded the honour of being Champion and is set to drive in the 24 hours race in Dubai.
When the television series first began, no one really understood just how life changing doing a few laps in Gran Turismo 5 could potentially be. The developers of the game, Polyphony Digital, together with Sony, teamed up with Nissan in order to bring one of the most radical ideas to life.
The GT Academy was set up where drivers who posted the fastest lap times in the game were called up to participate in a reality television series where the winner would be a part of the official Nissan racing team for the annual 24 Hour race which is held in Dubai every year.
This year, the three European champions have already been chosen after their respective seasons ended and all eyes were on the finale of the US GT Academy to see where things would go with the final 16 drivers.
In the end, after a record-setting run, Pete Doherty emerged as the victor and took his place on the podium. The mechanic from Plainfield, IL broke the track’s previous lap record to take first place in a ‘everything on the line’ race against the other finalists.
This was not the first time that Steve had participated in the competition as the he missed out on the final sixteen once before albeit by the narrowest of margins.
Doherty will now turn his attention to the 24 Hour Dubai race on the 10th of January, where he will team up with the rest of the winners of the competition.
The Gran Turismo series is one of Sony’s top selling IPs and there has been talk of the series seeing its next instalment release on either the PlayStation 4 or a portable version making its way on to the PlayStation Vita as well.
However, the only thing that has been confirmed is the fact that the developers of the series are working on Gran Turismo 6 with no other details available at this point in time.
No other details, except the fact that Kaz Yamauchi, the creator of the series recently awarded the GT Awards during SEMA earlier on in the year where he chose five cars as winners. The tradition is usually for those cars to be immortalised in the next instalment of the game so it could very well be that the cars will feature in Gran Turismo 6.
But what about the readers; did you try out of the GT Academy and what rank did you finish if you did? Let us know in the comments section below.
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