Did you grow up wanting to become a racing driver? Well, here is your chance. Nissan, along with its partner PlayStation, on Tuesday launched the Nissan PlayStation GT Academy — a driver discovery and development programme — in the Capital.

“The academy, which has been running for 5 years now, puts an ordinary person into a racing environment and turns him into a race driver,” the company said. It offers aspiring racers and gaming enthusiasts to register, compete and potentially win a place in the programme.

A racing simulator was launched which will be used to choose and shortlist candidates. Any one over the age of 18 with a valid driver’s license can apply.

Interestingly, anyone who has raced professionally in any form is not eligible to participate.

India is seeing growing interest for motor sports and hence we have extended the programme here, the company said.

Entered by racing on the Gran Turismo video game, the programme will test the enthusiasts through a time-trial competition on simulators. The qualifying rounds will be hosted at shopping malls in New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai. At a later stage it will also include an online qualifying round that will be hosted on the PlayStation Network.

Fourteen contestants who clock the quickest lap times will be eligible to compete in the national final. They will need to go through a two-day training examination programme, which will shortlist six contestants eligible for the International Race Camp at Silverstone in the UK.

The academy has trained about 4 million aspirants since its start in 2008, the company said.

Out of this, 1.2 million people were trained in 2013 alone.

Nissan will host the inaugural round of the competition on February 6 at the Delhi Auto Expo.

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