Jann Mardenborough

Driving alongside fellow GT Academy winners Lucas Ordóñez, Jordan Tresson and Bryan Heitkotter, he finished third in his class and 26th overall.

Jann Mardenborough (born 9 September 1991) is a British professional racing driver.

In 2010, Mardenborough went to university to study motorsport engineering, but dropped out after three weeks as it was too math-based for his liking.

During a gap year, he noticed an online time trial for the GT Academy competition on Gran Turismo 5 and decided to make a serious attempt at qualifying for the event, which offered a professional racing contract with Nissan to the overall winner.

After putting all his efforts into the time trial, which was contested by over 90,000 people, he managed to qualify in the top 20 in his region, which was required to progress to the next stages.

He then underwent training and a series of physical and racing challenges, eventually managing to get to the decisive final race, with all but three of his opponents having dropped out of contention.

The final was a 20-minute race around the Silverstone National Circuit in real Nissan 370Z sports cars, and Mardenborough won by eight seconds to be crowned GT Academy winner and earn the professional Nissan contract.

Before GT Academy, Mardenborough had never driven a high-performance car or been on a racetrack.

Following his GT Academy victory, Mardenborough went through a driver training programme and competed in several national races, enabling him to qualify for an international racing licence.

In 2011 he became the third and youngest winner of the GT Academy competition, beating 90,000 entrants to earn a professional racing contract with Nissan.

He had no previous motorsport experience, having played sim racing video games instead.

During his career, he has finished on the podium in his class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, won races and contended for titles in GT3 and junior formula cars, and competed at the highest level in Super GT, Super Formula and the FIA World Endurance Championship.

Following his GT Academy win, Mardenborough was rewarded with a drive for Nissan at the Dubai 24 Hour race in 2012, finishing third in class.

Subsequently, he competed full-time in the British GT Championship, scoring a race victory and challenging for the title.

He was then rewarded with a drive in a factory-backed Nissan 370Z GT4 at the Dubai 24 Hour race in January 2012.

During the rest of 2012, Mardenborough competed for RJN Motorsport in the British GT Championship with a Nissan GT-R GT3.

Together with Alex Buncombe, he won a race at Brands Hatch and ended the season in sixth place in the GT3 championship.

The pair had been on course to win the title in the final race until damper issues forced them outside the points.

He also took part in four rounds of the Blancpain Endurance Series.

In 2013, he competed in the European and British Formula 3 championships, before moving to the GP3 Series for 2014 and 2015.

He also competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, finishing third in the LMP2 class on his debut in 2013 and helping his team lead the category for 14 hours the following year.

In 2013 Mardenborough switched to formula racing.

At the beginning of the year he contested the 2013 season of the Toyota Racing Series in New Zealand.

He was a race winner in GP3, and also finished second overall in the Toyota Racing Series in 2014.

He competed for Nissan Motorsports in the top LMP1 class of the 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship, but the team withdrew from the series after one race because of a very uncompetitive car.

In 2015, Mardenborough was named as one of the 50 most marketable athletes in the world by Sports Pro Media.

The 2023 film Gran Turismo is based on his career.

Mardenborough, born in Darlington, is the son of English footballer Steve Mardenborough.

He spent most of his childhood growing up in Cardiff, Wales.

Mardenborough is portrayed by Archie Madekwe in the 2023 racing film Gran Turismo. Mardenborough serves as a co-producer, stunt driver and consultant on the movie, which depicts his early career and personal life, and gave permission for the filmmakers to include his 2015 crash at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, which killed one spectator.

He felt it "would have been a disservice for the audience for that not to be in there."

Mardenborough became interested in cars at a young age, and he dreamed of becoming a professional racing driver from the age of five or six, having learnt that it could be a job.

However, his family did not have the money required for him to start a career in motorsport, and he did not know anyone who could sponsor him, leading him to shelve the idea as he got older.

He began playing racing video games at the age of eight, when his friend had Gran Turismo on the original PlayStation.

He visited his friend to play the game so often he was eventually given both the console and the game so that he could play it at home.

After that, Mardenborough played the game almost constantly, and he continued to play subsequent Gran Turismo titles on the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, later with a force feedback steering wheel and pedals.

Since 2016, Mardenborough has raced in Japan, including in the top-level Super GT and Super Formula championships.

In 2016, he won a race and was a title contender in the lower GT300 class of Super GT, while also finishing runner-up in the Japanese Formula 3 Championship.

In 2017, he moved up to the top GT500 class, where he would race until the end of 2020, scoring a single podium finish and contending for wins on multiple occasions.

2017 was his only season in Super Formula, where he took a pole position.