The Gran Turismo movie is about to hit the theatres in August, and it will recount a story about a gamer who becomes a racer — in real life. This narrative is based on the real-life experience of racing game enthusiast Jann Mardenborough. Accordingly, we will dive into details on the inspirational life of Jann, whom the GT movie is based on. Who is Jann Mardenborough, and how did he evolve from a gamer into a real-life race car driver? Let’s delve into the true story behind Gran Turismo.
What Is the Gran Turismo Movie All About?
Gran Turismo is a racing simulation game franchise that was first released on PlayStation consoles in 1997. The games in this series do not feature a story mode. But in 2011, a competition called the GT Academy started for Gran Turismo players to have a chance to race a real-life car on tracks. The Gran Turismo movie begins some years before this event, with 20-year-old Jann Mardenborough (played by Archie Madekwe). He was a pro gamer who was denied any chances of entering real-life racing competitions by his family due to a lack of financial support.
Jann’s father is seen in the trailers of the movie, stating that their family cannot afford a highly-priced car just for racing. As a professional racing games enthusiast, Jann plays Gran Turismo games with a custom setup in his room. With all his experience winning thousands of times in racing in-game, he believed that one day, he could get behind a real-life racing car’s wheel on the race track. He then hears of the GT Academy held by team Nissan and PlayStation and takes the opportunity to compete for a chance to race in real life. But how is this story compared to Jann Mardenborough’s racing career in reality?
Who Is the Gran Turismo Movie’s Jann Mardenborough in Real Life?
Jann Mardenborough is a British motorsport racing driver. Born on September 9, 1991, in Darlington, Jann became a professional gamer in his youth, with expertise in the racing simulation game Gran Turismo. After competing online and locally with 90,000 other participants, he became the best Gran Turismo gamer in GT Academy in 2011.
The GT Academy was a series of competitions sponsored by Nissan Motor Co. and Sony Interactive Entertainment meant to gather the best Gran Turismo game players and give them a chance to become real-life racers. The Academy has four phases for the competitors, and the winner gets to race for Team Nissan.
How The GT Academy Race Camp Changed Jann’s Life Forever
After signing up for the competition and winning the intro test, Jann joins the GT Academy race camp. This camp is for the top players of the Gran Turismo racing simulator game. The event runs for about six weeks, during which the gamers are trained by real-life professional drivers and coaches. The training sessions teach gamers how to get into shape to race in a car. The process of becoming a real-life driver is determined not only by how fast you can finish a track in the game but by how you can handle a real car and endure the pressure. This is one of the most essential parts of Mardenborough’s career that we will see in the story of the Gran Turismo movie.
Jann Mardenborough and many other pro gamers are coached by Jack Slater (played by David Harbour) in the Gran Turismo movie. Aside from Darren Cox (played by Orlando Bloom), other side characters are fictional. Darren Cox is a businessman who came up with creating the GT Academy. In the Gran Turismo movie, he’s known by a different name, Danny Moore, due to various changes to his character compared to real life.
Now in the GT Academy, the racers are divided into various groups from each region in Stowe Circuit, UK. The best of each group compete to determine a final winner. After weeks of training on tracks, Jann is chosen to be a finalist competitor and wins against his other four opponents. As a result, he is given a full year of funded career to race for Team Nissan.
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However, this victory didn’t come with low effort. Everyone in the camp knew the prize, and all the other competitors did their best to achieve record laps on the track. But for Jann, this was more than winning a race. He raced against the clock on a single track for nearly two weeks daily to set a record time and enter the top spot for finals. Chasing a dream gave this gamer the spirit to change and fight for what he wanted.
In different interviews, Jann tells about how he never had the chance to drive a sports car on a track, as he didn’t come from a wealthy family to fund his dream. However, Jann proves with enough passion, enough commitment, and sheer will, even a game can be a real-life pro racer.
After his first race, Mardenborough continued his journey in various racing leagues and competitions. A year later, in 2012, he competed in a British GT Championship and secured 6th place with a victory. In 2013, he competed in six different racing championships and won 3rd place at Le Mans LMP2 for the Greaves Motorsport team.
Jann also won the second spot prize in the Toyota Racing Series in 2014. However, in 2015, he faced a tragedy when racing for the Nissan Motorsports team at Le Mans. In the famous Nurburgring track in Germany, Jann’s car rolled over and crashed into the side fences. This is a scene we will surely see in the Gran Turismo movie.
Is Jann Mardenborough Still Racing?
After the accident in 2015, Jann Mardenborough raced in three championship events the following year. One of them was the Japanese Formula 3 Championship, in which he won the 2nd place prize for the B-MAX Racing Team. After that, he’s still competing in different racing competitions in Japan.
Mardenborough’s life has been an inspiration to many other gamers who want to become real-life racers. The Gran Turismo movie adaption will portray the story of how a racing gamer’s passion went from virtuality to reality. How well will Neill Blomkamp’s movie directing experience mirror Jann Mardenborough’s biography in a cinematic film? We’ll find out in theatres on August 11, 2023.
