More Than a Game: The Improbable Rise of the Real ‘Gran Turismo’ Racer

Jann Mardenborough still remembers the night he picked up a controller and started racing. He was 8 years old. To celebrate Guy Fawkes Night, his parents had gathered with friends across the street to set off fireworks. But Mardenborough didn’t like loud noises, so he slinked away from the party to the neighbors’ living room, where a PlayStation sat on the floor. As the adults lit up the Cardiff night sky, Mardenborough couldn’t resist the temptation: He popped open a Sony Gran Turismo case lying on a nearby shelf, inserted the video game into the console, and purchased a violet Mitsubishi 3000GT from the used car dealership menu. Soon, he was hooked.

“After that, I would always come over to the house just to play the game,” Mardenborough says on a Zoom call from Amsterdam. “All I cared about was cars.”

Despite owning a Sega console, Mardenborough rarely played Sonic and had little interest in racing cartoonish vehicles through fantastical courses. He much preferred the authenticity of Gran Turismo, which had billed itself as “the real driving simulator” when it was released in 1997. Along with its unprecedented attention to detail and adherence to the laws of physics, the game boasted a collection of 140 roadsters to choose from, giving players the chance to customize all kinds of parts and designs. As a result, each day after school, Mardenborough fell further down the automotive rabbit hole—enough that his neighbors soon donated the PlayStation and game to him for free. “They got so annoyed with me turning up at their house all the time,” he says with a laugh. “I was obsessed.”

Over the next decade, Mardenborough became a Gran Turismo expert; he built his own racing cockpit simulator and balanced schoolwork with nightly races inside his attic room in the hopes of driving professionally one day. The goal seemed more like a pipe dream until the winter of 2011, when, at 19, he beat out 90,000 virtual racers to qualify for GT Academy, a British competitive reality TV show. Developed by Nissan and Sony, the series gave 12 gamers a chance to become real-life professional drivers. In the span of seven days, Mardenborough and his fellow contestants built up their cardiovascular endurance, g-force tolerance, and mental strength before test-driving a car they’d only ever controlled from a stationary position. “There’s muscles behind your ears, your hands, forearms, which burn,” Mardenborough says. “You get sore, it gets hot, but I understood it’s part of the process of being a driver.”

Mardenborough would soon take the checkered flag and become the competition’s third and youngest winner. Seven months later, he transitioned his victory into a roller-coaster professional career. Now facing drivers from a more traditional racing background, Mardenborough battled the stigma of his gamer reputation but managed to validate all the hours he’d spent perfecting turns and maneuvering around opponents with his joystick. He experienced some early success, including a breathless podium finish at Le Mans, one of the world’s most prestigious races. But Mardenborough also faced adversity: a rocky jump into formula racing and a devastating crash that made him contemplate retirement. But even with the preconceptions from the racing community, he’d proved Gran Turismo was more than just a game. “So many things have happened which no other academy [winner] had gone through,” he says. “I feel lucky and blessed to have had those opportunities.”

Eventually, Hollywood came knocking. This week, after 10 years of development, Gran Turismo hits theaters; it’s an attempt to capitalize on Mardenborough’s underdog status and the video game’s brand recognition. Directed by District 9’s Neill Blomkamp, the movie chronicles Mardenborough’s unlikely journey from gamer to real-life racer, condensing timelines and scrambling events to build out a classic sports movie. Mardenborough, who is now 31 and who served as a consultant and stunt driver for the production, was initially overwhelmed by the process of putting his life story on the big screen. But throughout a whirlwind international press tour, he realized the impact that sharing his improbable journey could have—both on his own niche industry and on other shy kids looking to follow his path. “If there’s one person who happens to watch the movie and gets an interest in motorsports or takes direction in their life,” he says, “then that’s a win for me.”

Photo by Oliver Hardt - Gran Turismo/Gran Turismo via Getty Images

Growing up in North East England, Mardenborough seemed destined for soccer. His father, Steve Mardenborough, played professionally, appearing in more than 300 matches with 25 different clubs over a 20-year career that moved the family—including Jann’s mother, Lesley-Anne, and his younger brother, Cai—all over the country. But throughout that itinerant phase of their life, Steve struggled to engage his son with the game he loved. After settling in Cardiff, where Steve would coach soccer camps during the summer, Jann situated himself away from the pitch to drive his remote-controlled Porsche 930 convertible, unbothered by the optics of being a nonparticipatory coach’s son. “I would just play with that car on the athletic running track,” Mardenborough says. “I had no interest at all.”

Indeed, nothing could match Mardenborough’s first love, which blossomed around the age of 5. While visiting with friends of his parents, he’d found a collection of Matchbox cars, “the first thing I was really into,” he says. Soon, Steve and Lesley-Anne bought him his own set, letting him race the tiny vehicles around a car mat in his bedroom. A couple of years later, Mardenborough graduated to constructing model trains and playing around with Scalextric, a miniature electric racetrack. He began watching British motorsports on television, more enamored of the Nissan Primeras and Ford Mondeos than the Formula One cars that dominated the television screen. “I watched British touring cars because they looked like cars,” Mardenborough says. “That was my real interest.”

Not long after discovering Gran Turismo at his neighbors’ home, he got his first taste of real racing—at a friend’s birthday party. Steve had taken him to Pembrey Circuit, their local track, where Mardenborough quickly earned his go-karting license by driving a kart with a lawn-mower engine around the indoor circuit for a few laps. “I had the instructor drive in front of me, and I kept on bumping him because he was going really slow,” he says. The owner witnessed Mardenborough’s skills and told Steve his son was a natural, but a year later, the track closed down. The nearest option to continue karting was in Bristol, but Mardenborough couldn’t afford the financial commitment. He didn’t even realize karting offered a viable path to car racing until he was a teenager and happened upon a track where his mom was having a work function. “That was the first time I ever saw or realized that there’s another level to karting,” he says.

To find his release, he retreated to his bedroom and resorted to Gran Turismo. The game, developed by Kazunori Yamauchi in the mid-’90s, distinguished itself from other racers with its physical realism—it paid close attention to the slopes and slickness of real-world tracks, took accurate measurements of tire traction and turn radius, and showed outside reflections in car windows. Anyone who played needed to understand the intricacies of braking, shifting gears, and adjusting to the rhythms of the toughest courses, all of which required hours of practice and a thorough understanding of what lies underneath a car’s hood. The endeavor felt tailor-made for Mardenborough, whose antisocial lifestyle and comprehensive car IQ thrived together. “I was the kid that could spot the car in the distance in the dark and know what [kind] it was just judging by the headlights,” he says.

As he upgraded consoles and bought the game’s latest versions, his parents began restricting his screen time. At 15, for example, in preparation for his General Certificate of Secondary Education, Mardenborough needed to complete two hours of studying after school before he could even touch his PlayStation. “Like every ’90s kid, the parent believes the child shouldn’t spend time in his room—they should go outside, climb a tree, touch grass,” he jokes. Ahead of his senior year, as Mardenborough completed his A-levels and took specialized courses for university, he decided to upgrade his gaming setup and build a cockpit simulator, planning to shoehorn it into his design and technology class as an academic project. “I was just bored with the joypad,” he says. “I wanted to get my own rig.”

Mardenborough didn’t have grand ambitions with the rig—he just “wanted more fun from the game.” Still, the summer before school returned, he looked at pictures and the dimensions of the Honda S2000 and Honda NSX, two cars with “really good driving positions,” he says. After reviewing the right measurements for the steering wheel and seat’s height, he began sawing up MDF and plywood in the backyard, leaving holes to make adjustments for the pedals. A month later, upon returning to class with the rig 80 percent finished, he chose an assignment that required him to design something in an art deco style. Without hesitation, he began painting the outside of his simulator, striping the seating and engine areas with black, white, and maroon. “I only got a B for that, which I’m still quite annoyed with to this day,” he says.

The grade, however, was enough for his parents, who gave him a monetary incentive to finish his last year strong so he could enroll in college. With the extra scratch they promised him, Mardenborough promptly purchased a Fanatec Porsche Turbo S steering wheel, which adapted to a variety of consoles, and he transported the rig back to his bedroom. To complete the structure, he found a red leather seat from an Alfa Romeo 156 at a nearby scrapyard. “The end result wasn’t perfect, especially now, because [the rig is] old,” he says. “But at the time, it’s what I used, and it worked.”

After turning 19, Mardenborough enrolled in Swansea Metropolitan University with the intention of studying motorsport engineering. But on induction day, as tour guides showed new students the school’s campus garage, Mardenborough got a glimpse at a formula car and began projecting the future. “I don’t know why, but my brain told me, ‘I’m going to be able to drive those cars,’” he says. The goal was to learn about automotive mechanics, work in the pits, and climb the ranks until he got into the driver’s seat. But Mardenborough “quickly found out it’s not about driving. It’s a lot of math,” he says of the engineering major. “The only reason I [took] that course is because I thought I’d be able to drive at some point.” Soon, he dropped out. “I was sure that route wasn’t for me. I was headstrong.”

As a result, Mardenborough moved back home and soon started working retail at Next, a U.K. department store. Then, one day, as he settled into his red leather chair, turned on his PlayStation, and began to escape reality again, a new menu item appeared: GT ACADEMY TIME TRIAL. Suddenly, the game he’d spent the majority of his life playing was sending him a signal, opening the slightest of windows into the career he’d always imagined.

“I was like, ‘OK, this is a chance.’”

Photo by Jakob Ebrey/Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images

Three years before Mardenborough saw the all-caps message on his screen, GT Academy had premiered in the U.K. with a bold vision. Conceived by Nissan Europe general manager Darren Cox in a joint vision with Sony Interactive Entertainment, the reality series aimed to collect the best Gran Turismo racers across six different countries and turn them into actual drivers. The gambit wasn’t that far-fetched, especially not for the game’s original creator. “Since I was working on the first GT, I had this conviction that you could learn real driving techniques through this game,” Yamauchi told The Ringer in 2018.

“Someone said to me that if you are good at Tiger Woods [PGA Tour], it doesn’t make you a good golfer,” Cox later told The New York Times. “Yes, but these guys have got steering wheels. They have also got pedals. They’ve also got a huge amount of determination to do the same thing over and over again. And it is exactly the same: aiming a car, braking, turning the car into the right area, accelerating out of the corner. It is exactly the same, just without the g-forces.”

During 2008’s inaugural competition, more than 25,000 contestants attempted to qualify, but just 22 were invited to the academy in Silverstone, England, which is the home of the British Grand Prix. At the academy, the contestants took part in a weeklong boot camp—enduring mental and physical challenges—to determine a winner, who would be invited to the Nissan Driver Development Programme. That season, both Spaniard Lucas Ordóñez and German Lars Schlomer were crowned winners; after a grueling four months in Nissan’s program, Ordóñez outlasted his co-victor, proving he could handle the rigors of a 24-hour endurance race. “I’m not a nervous guy, but I was physically sick with worry that we were sending this guy out to his death,” Cox told The Guardian. But the Spaniard finished the Dubai 24 and signed with Nissan shortly after, validating Cox’s original goal and prompting more talent development.

Mardenborough had seen the advertisements for the show’s first two seasons, but he had never been eligible to enroll. Now, at 19, he was eager to try his luck. He doubled down on his online driving efforts, learning the details of Sony’s assigned track while tinkering with his car’s mechanics over the competition’s six-week qualification window. As scores kept pushing him further down the rankings, Mardenborough maximized his chances, racing five hours per day. Finally, on the last night of eligibility, he set his best time yet. The next morning, he awoke and found out he’d made the cut. As his father told The Guardian in 2012: “He came downstairs and said: ‘Dad, I’ve qualified.’ I said: ‘Qualified for what?’”

Mardenborough couldn’t stay quiet or reserved any longer. After outlasting more contestants in a subsequent round, he joined 11 other competitors at the Silverstone Circuit to begin a gauntlet of military-style challenges. Some of them were obscure, like triathlons that required the gamers to pull their Nissan 370Zs with a special harness. The group even spent one afternoon inside an aerobatic airplane, shooting infrared guns and doing barrel rolls to simulate a dogfight: a test of quick thinking under duress and their ability to ward off nausea.

Soon enough, Mardenborough strapped into a Nissan GT-R and began confronting what he’d experienced only online. It should have been more challenging—transitioning to real windshields, reading racing lines, feeling the weight of the car’s momentum. But Mardenborough found most of it instinctual, a tribute to the hours he’d logged on his PlayStation. “The g-force is a bit of a thing, but it’s not massive,” he says, noting the greater challenges of driving a prototype or a formula car, where top speeds can exceed 200 miles per hour. After his first test-drive, Mardenborough wanted more. “I remember getting out of that car and saying to myself, ‘I can’t go on with my life not experiencing that and having that happen again,’” Mardenborough says. “It fueled me.”

On the last day of the competition, Mardenborough rode the pole position to victory to beat out three other racers. He celebrated his win of the GT Academy crown by popping a bottle of champagne. Like Ordóñez before him, Mardenborough spent the next several months earning his racing license before competing at the Dubai 24 with an all-gamer team, later entering an agreement with Nissan to join its racing squad. Along the way, Mardenborough leaned on Gavin Gough, a performance coach at the academy, and Ricardo Divila, a longtime racing jack-of-all-trades who became the young Brit’s mentor as he began his career. “There was a lot of smoke being blown up my ass around that time. There was so much media, and [Ricardo] was someone very straight down the line,” Mardenborough says. “People would treat me with kid gloves. They would make the joke about, ‘You can’t press start and reset.’ All this stuff, which I didn’t like. I hated the ‘gamer-to-racer’ tag. I wanted to be known as a racing driver.”

After nearly winning the British GT Championship in 2012, Mardenborough shook off his remaining detractors by jumping into a single-seater in 2013 to compete in the FIA Formula 3 European Championship. “[Nissan] didn’t need to do that,” he says, referring to this particular opportunity to compete. “I was very thankful. All the other academy drivers, apart from Lucas, hadn’t done any formula cars.” The F3 experience prepared him to race later that year in a Nissan-powered LMP2 prototype at Le Mans, where Mardenborough and another all-gamer team took third place, once again defying the odds. “The guys he’s racing, some of them have been racing in Formula Three for longer than he’s been racing [altogether],” Cox told MotorTrend at the time. “Our job is to give them as much experience as quickly as possible and with the right tools. We’ve got to pick up 10 to 15 years of experience that they haven’t got in real cars.”

Mardenborough’s greatest challenge would come at his worst professional moment. In 2015, while racing at the Nurburgring Nordschleife, a track he’d loved as a gamer, he felt the front end of his GT-R Nismo lift off the ground as he approached a turn. Soon, his entire vehicle had gone vertical, leaving the track and flipping over the barrier in a crash that killed one spectator and injured several others. Mardenborough always went down a mental checklist when races didn’t go to plan, but this time was different. He felt massive guilt as he recovered from minor injuries in the hospital. Somebody had died. “There’s more things you have to contemplate,” he says. “While I was in the hospital, I asked myself the question: ‘Do you still want to do this?’ It was the first time I had asked myself that, and it’s a difficult question to ask because it’s real.”

The answer, eventually, was yes, but Mardenborough had to test himself first. He wanted to put on a helmet, strap into his seat, and feel the psychological sensation of sitting behind the wheel again. “I needed confirmation being in the racing car, and the people around me at the time were fantastic with that because they agreed,” he says. Just a week after the crash, he climbed into his car, pulled the leather straps over himself, and attempted a 20-lap warm-up to see how he felt. By the time he turned off the engine, Mardenborough had completed 110 laps. “Motor racing requires a focus so singular and acute that, when you are in the car, nothing else exists,” he wrote for History’s Car Week. “And this is the place where I have come to know myself best.”

Photo by Sam Bloxham/Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images

Two years later, Sony approached Mardenborough about incorporating his life story in a Gran Turismo movie, which had pivoted in focus since beginning development in 2013. At the time, he was living in Japan, competing in the GT500 class of the Super GT series, the country’s most competitive sports car competition. With 16 races and eight test sessions scheduled throughout 2017, however, he didn’t have the energy to think about potential Hollywood endeavors. “I was like, ‘OK, fantastic, but until I have more concrete evidence, then I’m not really going to focus on this at all,’” he says.

When Mardenborough’s schedule opened up later that year, producer Dana Brunetti met with him and Cox to discuss the opportunity. The two were impressed by Brunetti’s résumé of biopics and real-life adaptations—21, The Social Network, Captain Phillips—but Mardenborough had two unexpected stipulations right off the bat: “The guy has to look like me, and he has to have my real name.” Eventually, in 2019, Mardenborough met with more producers and screenwriters in Wales, and after some reassurances regarding his requests, he began the challenging task of unpacking the details of his life and career. “I do my thing, learn from it, box it off, and then move on,” he says. “Now, I’m having to open up this box that has been dormant.”

In true Hollywood form, Gran Turismo isn’t a carbon copy of Mardenborough’s gamer-to-racer evolution. Though the British racer sifted through every draft, offering advice on racing accuracy and English humor, the final product is a composite of Mardenborough’s relationships and life events, occasionally rearranged for dramatic effect. Still, he was adamant about including his Nurburgring crash, making sure Archie Madekwe, the actor portraying him, found the right emotional register for the scene. “It’s my life; it’s part of my story,” he told The Sunday Times Driving. “So I feel it would have been a disservice for the audience for that to not be in there.”

Mardenborough believes the movie could put another target on his back, reigniting dialogue around his hyper-publicized gamer reputation from his early years. Especially because, after leaving Super GT at the end of 2020 and parting ways with Nissan shortly after, his recent racing has taken place only in a simulator, helping McLaren engineers assess and develop the dynamics and design of a Formula E prototype. Eager to rebrand himself and find a new racing team in Europe (he hopes to drive a hypercar and return to GT3 racing), he believes the film will help his professional goals and attract younger fans back to the sport. With the parallel rise of professional esports, which has dampened the stigma of gaming as a career, it might even inspire a new wave of young racers. “I think there’s a lot of drivers that will respect that,” he says.

It still scares Mardenborough to consider what his career might have looked like had he never reached the pinnacle of GT Academy. “I highly doubt I would have achieved anything minutely resembling what I have through the academy,” he says. The sentiment primarily stems from the improbability of bursting onto the scene without the belief and financial commitment from Sony and Nissan. But it’s also a tribute to his family, who let him pursue his passion despite the risks; to Yamauchi, whose game continues to be a valuable racing tool; and to someone like Divila, the mentor who fostered his acceptance inside the sport. “He would treat me as a racing driver,” he says. “Not as a GT Academy driver. Not as a gamer to racer. As a racer.” After countless hours spent in his bedroom, wearing down his control pad and chasing his dream through a screen, Mardenborough has all he ever wanted.

Jake Kring-Schreifels is a sports and entertainment writer based in New York. His work has also appeared in Esquire.com, GQ.com, and The New York Times.