GT Academy launched with a Press and PR event, before the official start of the competition at the Nurburg ring, Germany. Press coverage led to a plethora of content on fan and blog sites.

A TV and press campaign ran across Europe driving players to the official website to encourage entry and generate further interest.

Following online qualifier rounds the top 30 players per market were invited to a national final event where they competed head to head. The top 3 gamers in each market won a place at the GT boot camp, a week long event at Silverstone testing mental, physical and driving abilities. The two winners were put through a four-month training programme, culminating in the Dubai 24-hour race. Each stage of the competition was filmed for a TV series and digital content which was then distributed to major TV channels, social media and media partner sites across Europe.

Throughout the initial online qualifiers over 25,000 people registered to compete for the chance to win a place at one of the twelve national finals.

To date there have been over 10 million unique visitors to the GT Academy website and over 500,000 downloads of the webisodes.

The TV series has been successfully distributed FREE across Europe to 27 Channels so far. During the competition period Gran Turismo 5 Prologue sales peaked at 250,000 units and the Logitech steering wheels sold out across Europe as competitors were keen to practise on the official racing kit.

There is now a two-year waiting list for the Nissan GTR. The overall campaign has generated in excess of £2m of PR coverage and an overall ROI of 8:1Our winner Lucas Ordonez went from being a student to a professional racing driver.