Video games the new race school

If you'd never driven a car before, but had a killer video game set-up with a full rig – a steering wheel and pedal box – you could drive a real car near or at its limit, no problems.

That's the word from 22-year-old wonder kid Jann Mardenborough, a Nissan-sponsored professional race driver who won the 2011 GT Academy, a global video game competition to find the best new motor racing talent.

"If you had no experience at all at driving anything in real life, and you had a pedal set-up in a rig and had Gran Turismo 6, you could jump from that into a real car, and drive it very near the limit or on the limit," Mardenborough told motoring.com.au at the NISMO GT Academy International Race Camp in Silverstone this week.

Since winning the GT Academy he has raced Formula 3, scored his maiden win in GP3 in Germany this year and landed a contract with the Infiniti Red Bull racing team development program.

"It teaches about weight transfer, it teaches you the heel and toe technique, left-foot braking, controlling slides," he said of modern racing computer games.

Organisers of the GT Academy, which has had an impressive success rate in blooding new drivers since 2008 when Sony and Nissan joined forces to give video-gamers a shot at a racing career, reckon that gamers naturally make good racers, specifically due to high concentration levels and rapid reaction times.

"I can only go from what I've experienced but I'd never been sideways in real life before GT Academy, so first time I did that at Brands Hatch at the national finals in a Nissan 370Z, all I was doing was what I would do in the game," explained Mardenborough.

The British rising star was attending the 2014 GT Academy to see how the current crop of racers were faring, including one Australian racer, 27-year-old Josh Muggleton, who is into the final and will be attempting to become the first Aussie to win the GT Academy.

As is always the case, the winner of the 2014 GT Academy lands a Nissan contract to race for a NISMO race team internationally.

For Mardenborough, the journey has now seen him sign with the Red Bull Junior Team driver development program, which is where current F1 drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel cut their teeth.

"I think video games blur the lines between real and virtual worlds," said Mardenborough, before adding that kart racing is crucial for youngsters learning how to race in a pack, how to defend and how to attack.

In 2011 the young Brit beat 90,000 entrants to win the GT Academy, and said he logged hundreds of hours playing Gran Turismo on PlayStation to get better lap times and qualify for the competition.

"I played the game for a minimum five to six hours per day to get the lap time, for two weeks solid. I played it heavily for six weeks, but not until the last two weeks got serious.

"Some people can spend three hours and be there, but me? I had to work at it."

The motor racing rising star says the Red Bull Racing simulators he uses to hone his GP3 skills are nothing like current video games and far more "hardcore".

"It's a lot of numbers and matrices on the screen. It's just numbers everywhere, and the graphics aren't that good. It doesn’t look pretty, but the way it drives is better. The controls are more lifelike, the steering is heavy when going through Eau Rouge in a GP3 car -- it's properly stiff. The brake pedal is like a rock, the throttle too. With Gran Turismo it's more forgiving."

Although he hasn't had a dip on the F1 simulators used by Daniel Ricciardo, "which no one but F1 drivers see," Mardenborough says getting into F1 would be a dream.

"You have to be very, very lucky to get into F1, and I will push as hard as I can as I want to achieve the best that I can," said the astute young driver, who cites Lewis Hamilton as one of his idols. And what a journey that could be, from avid video gamer to F1 driver...