BARCELONA, Spain – This weekend's Nissan GT Sport Cup European Final will feature 48 Sony PlayStation GT Sport virtual racers competing for the chance of a lifetime to win a trip to the 2018 NISMO Festival in Japan.
The fastest entrants in the FIA-Certified Gran Turismo Manufacturer Series who selected Nissan as their brand of choice will compete against 12 wildcard entrants at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, which will also host this weekend's final round of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup.
Event ticket holders for this weekend's Blancpain GT race can enter the wildcard competition on site on Saturday to earn one of the final 12 spots.
GT Sport Motul Team RJN drivers Lucas Ordóñez and Ricardo Sanchez will be on site to act as mentors for the PlayStation racers along with fellow Gran Turismo winner and Nissan Super GT GT500 racer Jann Mardenborough who is filling in on track this weekend for the injured Ordonez.
Racers from Hungary, Germany, Finland, Spain, Portugal, France, Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Czech Republic, Italy and the United Kingdom will not only get the chance to win a trip to the NISMO Festival, but the winner will also get to visit the Tokyo headquarters for Polyphony Digital, the creators of Gran Turismo and GT Sport.
NISMO Festival is Nissan's annual fan celebration where the stars and cars of Nissan's global motorsport activities from yesterday and today descend on Fuji International Speedway for demonstration races, autograph sessions and other fan activities.
"The NISMO Festival is an incredible event," said Ordóñez. "It is like a high-speed mobile museum with some of the coolest cars in Nissan history all on track at the same event. It is such a great event for the fans with so much to see and do. To get the chance to visit the festival is amazing, but to get to see where Gran Turismo is created at Polyphony Digital's headquarters is a once in a lifetime opportunity. The number of fans picking Nissan as their brand of choice in the series has been incredible, and they have all been incredibly fast. Ricardo, Jann and I all started our careers playing Gran Turismo and winning GT Academy; our success has really kick-started the whole gamer-to-racer genre, and the level of competition now is incredibly fierce."
The European winner will be joined on the trip by the leading Nissan racer in other regions around the world. Leading gamers will also have the chance to try Nissan machinery on track at Silverstone by topping the points table in each of the three monthly "seasons" of the FIA-certified Gran Turismo Championship Manufacturer Series.
This weekend's virtual competition will be live streamed across multiple channels including NISMO.com, NISMO.tv on YouTube and the NISMO Facebook page plus the PlayStation Europe YouTube channel.
The final round of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup also will be live streamed this week on NISMO.com and NISMO.tv on YouTube.
While the virtual racers do battle on GT Sport in the paddock, on the other side of the pit wall, GT Sport Motul Team RJN will be looking to finish the season on a high with Alex Buncombe, Matt Parry and Jann Mardenborough aboard the No. 23 Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 and Struan Moore, Ricardo Sanchez and newcomer Colin Noble racing the No. 22 entry.
Check out the latest episode of our NISMO.tv series - GT Sport "Passion."
NISMO Calendar
September 29-30
Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup, Barcelona, Spain
September 29-30
Supercars Bathurst 1000, Mount Panorama, Bathurst, NSW, Australia
Contact
Anna Teslik
Global Motorsport Marketing and Communications Manager
Phone: +33 7 7614 7286
ATeslik@nissan-europe.com
Paul Ryan
Global Motorsport Marketing and Communications Manager
Phone: +1 678 644 0404
paul@nismosupport.com
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Get more information about Nissan motorsports on NISMO.com.