GT Academy Winners Announced. It's All Dudes. Mostly Unemployed Dudes.

Jack Baruth
by Jack Baruth

The winners of Nissan’s GT Academy have been chosen. To nobody’s surprise in particular, their group photograph is completely unsuitable for this site. Turns out that the Internet is a little short on hot girls or street-wise African-American dudes who are totes into racing imaginary cars online. Oh well. Now, the shortlist of digital Sennas is off to try their hand at driving some real cars.

While the Nissan GT Academy doesn’t necessarily prove that being a great video-game race-car driver is equivalent to becoming a great real-world race car driver, the winners of the program have gone on to some considerable success. The 2011 US winner, Bryan Heitkotter, already has a couple of Grand-Am Continental podiums under his belt and took 27th place (of 35) in his Speed World Challenge GT debut this past weekend. (Long-time TTAC readers will be interested to note that your author’s nemesis, Michael Cooper, clinched both the Touring Car win and the season championship this weekend. Congratulations Michael!)

This year’s contenders are pretty much what you’d expect: most of them list their occupation as either “Student” or “Unemployed”. None of them abandoned careers in modeling or powerlifting to pursue their dream of racing in the basement. Still, there’s nothing like a professional career in European sports-car racing to catch some attention from gold-digging ex-prostitutes from the Eastern Bloc the ladies. We wish the competitors the best and will keep all of you posted on the results of the final in-car competition!

Jack Baruth
Jack Baruth

More by Jack Baruth

Comments
Join the conversation
4 of 12 comments
  • Icemilkcoffee Icemilkcoffee on Aug 31, 2012

    I like how they shaded and darkened the photos to disguise the vitamin D deficiency.

  • Domestic Hearse Domestic Hearse on Aug 31, 2012

    Much to their mothers' surprise and delight, the plan of using video game proficiency, rather than getting a job, as a means of moving out of the basement has actually worked. These, then, are the real Men of Genius.

  • Glen.H Glen.H on Aug 31, 2012

    I'm sure every last one of them is a hit with the ladeeze..."It's not a basement, it's a make-out pad!"

  • Inside Looking Out Inside Looking Out on Sep 02, 2012

    Where these guys live? We do not have basements here in state of California. May be in attics? I did not quite get that "Western boys and Eastern girls" thing either.

Next