A new talent will be on display at the Dubai 24-hour endurance race come January: the very Latino, soccer-mad, mechanical engineer from Mexico, Ricardo Sanchez. At 24, he is relatively ‘old’ for the sport but his skill and speed shone through to crown him this year’s champion at the Nissan PlayStation GT Academy’s race camp held this month. As a result, he will join other talented athletes in the Nissan NISMO team in Dubai.

Making it to the podium alongside Sanchez were Abhinay Bikkani of India, Ahmed bin-Khanen of Saudi Arabia, Joshua Muggleton of Australia and Thanroj Thanasitnitikate of Thailand. Bin-Khanen really lucked out: he will also feature in Dubai thanks to backing from Nissan Middle East.

And to think they got here because they and 22 others from Mexico, India, West Asia, Australia and Thailand – all markets Nissan is exploring – are mad about gaming! Specifically, Gran Turismo®. For the uninitiated, this is a race simulator that provides an adrenalin rush almost, but not quite, as intense as actually burning rubber on the race track. Taking part early this year in gaming competitions set up across these regions, mostly in shopping malls, and beating competition running into thousands, gave armchair gamers a chance to become actual racers. Literally, going from the virtual to the real at the Silverstone Race Camp conducted by GT Academy, a collaboration between PlayStation® and Nissan.

Additionally, they all star in a new reality show based on this programme, set to air in a couple of months. It will bring television views up close and personal to the spills, chills and thrills of the entire experience, not to forget the shedding of tears and popping of champagne bottles. Which probably explains the criteria that went into selecting the finalists from each country in the first place.

The India leg The programme was launched in 2008. India was included for the first time this year. There were over 5,000 entries which, for India, is not a large number, but it is considerable. Of these, 28 were shortlisted for a gala but gruelling two-day final at Jaipur where they were tested on simulators as well as driving a stock Micra on the track. And five from this group found themselves en route to the final frontier in the UK.

The surprise package was Prakash Nair, a businessman from Thiruvananathapuram who entered through an online challenge and was delighted when get got an email asking him to report for the final. What’s amazing is that in this sport where even 19-year-old student Karl Patel was considered already “too old”, Nair was 42! He was nearly twice the age of most of the competitors at Silverstone, yet, he was the fittest in the Indian team. But he got there in the spirit of the event, encapsulated in a poster which said: “This is not just a game. GT Academy is about finding serious motor racing talent and taking them where they deserve to be.” That separated the casual from the intense, the laidback from the passionate, the gamer from the athlete as judges gauged physical, mental as well as personality strengths.

The introverted Karl had only played using controls, on a regular gamepad. He used the steering wheel for the first time in Jaipur. “I just copied what everyone else was doing,” he said to freelance journalist Tony Coles. Clearly, his talent saw him through. The garrulous Glen Ivan Suchita put aside his job as a financial analyst. He recalls with a laugh that when he called his mother to say he’d won a place to Silverstone, all she said was: “You want to be a driver?!”

And then there was journalist Abhinav Bhatt who was the first in the team to be eliminated. He later said he knew he was a good driver but racing was not his thing. The sixth finalist, Akshay Gupta, couldn’t make it to the UK for personal reasons.

Blazing challenges A 2011 champion, Jann Mardenborough of the UK draws attention to the big difference between gaming and racing. Your eyes are fixed on the screen when you play, it’s two-dimensional, but sitting in a race car, negotiating the track and the field of cars calls for many skills, and coordination at several sensory levels. The contestants have “amazing vision, but no feel”, GTA instructor Christian Vann explained to Coles. “Feel is something else entirely; it comes naturally to a racer who’s worked up from g-karts to sports cars or single-seaters. In the virtual world of Gran Turismo, the physicality of racing is entirely absent, with most competitors unaccustomed to the savage tug and pull of real-world racing G-forces.”

This is where the boot camp at Silverstone plays its part.

“You have to adapt,” says Mardenborough, speaking about his own experiences as a kid who saved up for a wheel paddle and became an expert gamer and his rigorous training regime before, during and after GTA. He went on to make a podium finish at Dubai in 2012 and has since been living the dream. Indeed, all the champions since the first GTA camp in 2008 came through the most rigorous challenges.

This year they included the Mud Mayhem assault course, the Micra stock car racing, a traffic challenge in the powerful GT-R, a dirt track time trial in the Juke, a head-to-head gymkhana, buggy racing and a time trial (best of three laps) on the Stowe circuit. Eliminations starting on day 2 left the top-runner from each country to blaze it out through eight laps of the national circuit – about 2.6 km a lap – in the amazing sports car 370Z on the final day, August 14. The weather was typically British – bright blue skies one moment, drooping wet and windy cold the next.

The icing on the circuit After a couple of days of breaking in, the competition began. It was all or nothing from the very first day. Sometimes it was heartbreakingly close as Glen discovered during the gymkhana, and Hadi Abdel Hadi of Lebanon who recorded a better time but nicked a cone, and Marcello Rivera from Australia who botched up in the buggy round.

“That’s the nature of the sport,” says Karun Chandhok, former F-1 racer and mentor of the Indian team. He knows there are no second chances, there can be no excuses. Which is why the presence of champion mentors for each team gave the contestants a boost, apart from the occasion delicious dinner. The mentors doubled as judges. While performance in the event on the day counted, they also took into account overall improvement during the camp. And while every effort was made to help the contestants relax, there was considerable tossing and turning in the living quarters in the snoozebox, which is basically a converted shipping container.

Another angle The big disappointment though, is the absence of women on the track. After all, this is one sport in which men and women can compete equally, as Karun testifies. For some reason, few women seem to be entering the gaming competition.

Commenting on the experience, Prakash says, “Abhinay’s a huge talent, and he improved remarkably as the camp progressed. Quite frankly, I got tired halfway. Maybe if I’d been younger…” The hunger isn’t there now, he admits. Youth makes the difference, blood must rush to the brain, you have to go flat out. And that only a young person can do. Karun agrees.

The general assessment was that as a team, the Indians tended to fall short. Also, they didn’t seem to be sufficiently prepared. Muggleton, for instance, shed 10 kilos after his selection into the final list and before arriving at Silverstone. The Australian team had also practised the gymkhana routine back home.

Is it an ‘Indian’ thing, this being satisfied with playing the game, never mind winning or losing? “Maybe we mollycoddle our children,” says Karun. More importantly, though, he feels they didn’t realise exactly how big this opportunity is.

For now, though, both Sanchez and bin-Khanen have a tough training schedule ahead. Watch out for them. And the next time you are admonished for “wasting your time” on a racing simulator, stay focussed. Who know, there may be a racing career in your stars.

The writer was at Silverstone on the invitation of GTA Global

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