The Belgian Wolfgang Reip was proclaimed champion of the Nissan PlayStation® GT Academy last Saturday in Silverstone, at the end of the 830,000 European players of Gran Turismo®. The 25 -year -old born in Lachutel, will return to the United Kingdom shortly to embark on an intensive pilot development program for the demanding 24 hours of Dubai that will play with a Nissan 370z GT4 next January.
The outcome of the competition was part of the program of the world championship test (WEC) in Silverstone, where precisely the first winners of the GT Academy, Lucas Ordoñez and Jordan Tresson, played the test by piloting LMP2 prototypes with Nissan engines. The six GT Academy finalists participated in a race with identical Nissan 370zs in the famous Grand Prix layout. Starting from the pole position, Wolfgang knew how to endure the constant attacks of the second classified, Andrea Cosaro and achieved an important advantage to first see the checkered flag.
After a long deliberation by the judges, where all the data collected during the intense week of evidence were taken into account and paying special attention to the future potential of the pilots, Reip was announced as the champion of the European GT Academy 2012 and European and climbed to the highest position of the podium in Silverstone.
"This is the most incredible day of my life," Wolfgang said excited. "It's fantastic, simply brutal. I cried on the podium because I was very excited. It has been a very long week. There were different challenges and much to learn and experiment to be the final winner after so many people have participated in Gran Turismo, it is impressive."
"I was confident in the race. He wanted to win and it was quite surprising. The track was very delicate for the rain. There were constant changes, in each curve of the circuit there were wet and dry areas, despite this I had the controlled test. Andrea tried to pass me in Copse, but I knew that I could advance at the exit of the curve, so it was not a threat."
