A couple of driver announcements have caught my eye this week:
This morning’s release confirming that Tristan Vautier is joining the SARD-Morand effort for the first two races of the WEC has a recent Indycar Rookie of the Year looking for a way into the fastest growing World championship on the FIA’s current roster, and there’s nothing wrong with or surprising about that. My current inbox and call list is littered with equally talented drivers looking to do exactly the same thing, with the single seater ladder lacking several top rungs, more and more talented drivers are looking elsewhere for career options and finding them in GT and LMP machinery.
Nissan’s latest batch of LMP1 driver announcements too, with favoured sons Jann Mardenboprough, Michael Krumm and Lucas Ordonez joining the effort, is not too big a surprise either – Though judging by Lucas Ordonez’s reaction here he didn’t agree!
But hang on a minute, how can I dismissively fling a ‘not surprising’ analysis here.
Let’s take a step back.
Putting aside, just for a moment, the seeming no-brainer of involving Michael Krumm, a man with previous factory (and privateer) LMP1 experience, plus years of Super GT, LMP2 and other Nissan service there are two young men whose story deserves some proper analysis.
Lucas Ordonez was the very first winner of the Nissan GT Academy in 2008 and since then has had an astonishing career in a huge range of machinery: He’s twice finished on the podium at Le Mans in LMP2, has race and class winning form as far afield as the Nurburgring 24 Hours and Super GT.
He’s tested V8 Supercars, was rostered for the Nissan ZEOD RC for Le Mans and drove the original Nissan DeltaWing (together with Gunnar Jeannette) to its fifth place finish at Petit Le Mans.
He’s respected by his peers as a full professional driver and will combine his duties at Le mans for Nissan with a full season of GT500 action in Super GT.
Jann Mardenborough meanwhile has had, if anything, an even more astounding journey.
He’s raced GT4, GT3, LMP2, F3, TRS and GP3 machinery, recently tested Super Formula in spectacular style, outpacing drivers with huge racing heritage (and track knowledge too).
He’s won races in GT and single seater cars, has finished on a Le Mans class podium and has attracted (sometimes begrudging) compliments from any number of industry observers.
To get this opportunity these two young men have had to beat off the interest of a number of recent (and current) F1 drivers, plus a legion of other professionals, some with sponsors eager to leverage their involvement.
Yes of course there’s a marketing and PR benefit to their involvement, but that benefit would have been broadly the same if only one of them had been selected.
It would be easy to comment that these two young men have had the very best thrown at them, factory resources, more testing than most young professionals get, coaching, physical preparation and other advantages. All of that may be true, but then lets look at the other side of the coin.
For Ordonez the Nissan GT Academy was anything but a sure thing, this was the very first time that GT Academy had happened, and lost in the mists of time is the fact that Lucas was one of two winners that year.
The now all but forgotten Lars Schlömer too passed the selection processes but dropped out as he was unable to adapt to the real racing machinery, not a simple transition, but one that Lucas has taken in his stride.
Even aside from that lets recall the history of ‘reality’ TV, pretty typically the level of preparedness of people entering after year one increases. Whether that’s in their level of innate ability as in GT Academy, or their willingness to behave like publicity hungry reptiles (like Big Brother etc etc etc!)
Coming along later down the line has some downsides too though. When Lucas applied to GT Academy the outcome was a totally unknown quantity. The ultimate prize was a one-off drive, in a GT4 Nissan 350Z, at the Dubai 24 Hours, NOT a career as a pro racing driver.
By the time things had progressed a couple of years, and Nissan had realised what they had created, the numbers applying for the GT Academy had ballooned, Jann had to fight off competition from almost four times as many competitors as Lucas had just three years earlier.
The selection process had matured too. Put simply it was tougher, in both quantitative and qualitative terms to win.
Fast forward to 2015 and there two young men will be matched up against the very best that the other factory teams can muster. Across the other three factory LMP1 teams at Le Mans that includes six World Champion drivers, six Le Mans winners, eight ex F1 drivers, a Grand Prix winner, an Indycar race winner, a GP2 Champion, three Super GT Champions, three Super Formula Champions, a British F3 Champion and winners of any number of other races, Series and Championships.
To say that the GT Academy is about to be tested would be a simply massive understatement.
Schools Out, For Ever!
