The Best Way to Spot Great Racing Drivers? Videogames - Wired
The next time you’re about to scold your kid—or spouse—for spending too much time playing videogames instead of enjoying the sunny weather, consider this: They could be preparing for a career in motorsports. That’s a possibility Nissan and Sony have created with their “GT Academy,” a worldwide contest to find skilled racing gamers and make them into skilled racing drivers, then send them to the big leagues. Aside from receiving a healthy dose of God-given talent, aspiring athletes need to put in huge amounts of practice, then be discovered by someone in a position to get them to the big leagues. The talented rise to the top, gain attention, and can make their way to the major leagues with million-dollar paychecks. By the time an aspiring race car driver reaches a top-tier racing league, where they might get paid (drivers in lower leagues sometimes pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a spot on the team), they might have put in more than a million... Some F1 drivers (or their sponsors) actually pay teams to race for them, rather than the other way around. Unfortunately, this means that it’s likely the most talented drivers out there, the ones born with the talent and ability, might never find themselves behind the wheel of a race car. That’s why Nissan and Sony partnered up in 2008 to create GT Academy. It’s one part publicity-generating contest, one part top-to-bottom racing academy. Source: www.wired.com
