Last year Nissan South Africa hosted a press event to launch GT Academy South Africa. For those who don’t know, GT Academy lets PlayStation gamers have a shot at transferring their Gran Turismo racing skills into real life.

At the event Nissan had Lucas Ordóñez, the inaugural GT Academy winner, talk to us about the contest and how his life has changed since he progressed from video games to real life racing. Ordóñez even went on to finish second in LMP2 at the 2011 Le Mans – no small feat.

Anyway, ZA Car’s very own Christo van Gemert was at the event along with Thomas Falkiner, from the Sunday Times, and Ashley Oldfield from Top Car magazine. They went on to do well, finishing in the top four in the karting event (in order, Oldfield, Ordóñez, Falkiner, van Gemert).

And then Ashley went home to enter the Gran Turismo part of GT Academy, on his PlayStation 3. He progressed through the online stages. Then went to the semifinals at Kyalami. And ultimately the finals, at Silverstone.

Ashley won. He is the first South African GT Academy winner, and also one of the first South African prospects in international racing in a long while.

In this episode of ZA Car Show, Christo and Tom relive that day in December last year, and chat to Ashley about his future with Nissan Motorsport.