Three racers each from KSA and Lebanon split top honours in the second Nissan Playstation® Middle East and will now move to Silverstone to prove their real-track mettle.
It’s like a chapter out of the movie ‘Inception’ where reality and dream are so thinly separated that those in the dream cannot make out if it isn’t reality or not. The inception of the game Nissan PlayStation® GT Academy was pretty much in the same manner when Darren Cox, Global Head Brand, Marketing and Sales NISMO, set out to prove that a gamer with outstanding driving skills in the virtual world could perform equally well in a car on the tarmac. The idea has succeeded brilliantly since 2008 in Europe and since last year in the Middle East.
The six finalists with Samir Cherfan, managing director, Nissan Middle East and racing legend Dr. Mohammed bin Sulaiyem.
Nissan and Sony PlayStation® have held the second Nissan PlayStation® GT Academy Middle East challenge in Dubai, where 28 finalists from around the Middle East has just staged a virtual battle for top honours over two days at the Dubai World Trade Centre. Anyone could enter the contest online by owning a PlayStation® and a copy of Gran Turismo 6 or by attending a Nissan PlayStation GT Academy live event throughout the Middle East.
The top six turned out to be: Hadi Abdel Hadi (Lebanon), Bahaa Abdel Hadi (Lebanon), Mohamad Jamal Ghandour (Lebanon), Walid Al Ghamdi (Saudi Arabia), Yasser Al Mansoor (Saudi Arabia) and Ahmed Khaled (Saudi Arabia). They will undergo a race drivers’ boot camp at Britain’s famous Silverstone circuit to determine the overall Middle East GT Academy winner, who will then be given the opportunity to be a professional track racer.
The 28 final contestants from across the Middle East
The Middle East’s 2014 winner will follow in the tyre tracks of Qatari Salman Al-Khater, last year’s champion, who won his first race at the 2013 Britcar 1000km after making the transition from gaming.
