Autoblog UK talks to Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi

%Gallery-91122%

Kazunori Yamauchi is the legendary Japanese game designer responsible for the Gran Turismo® series. He's notoriously low profile and a legend in the gaming world, making it very difficult to get an audience with the man who knows all the secrets of the world's most popular racing game - the fifth installment of which is due out this year.

But we caught up with Kazunori at Snetterton this weekend, where he was trackside to watch the progress of PlayStation® and Nissan's GT Academy 2010 - a competition that aims to turn armchair experts on the Gran Turismo game into real-life racing drivers. First prize is a fully-sponsored drive in the European GT4 Cup this season, and Kazunori has taken a close personal interest in the event, which attracted entries from over 1.2 million gamers from across 17 countries.

After an intensive selection process, two finalists – Jordan Tresson of France and Italian Luca Lorenzini – were racing 370Zs in the Britcar Production Series on Saturday in advance of the final showdown, a one-on-one test session at Silverstone later this week. We dragged Kazunori away from studying the dozens of cars in the Britcar pit lane to get his thoughts on the GT Academy and the forthcoming launch of GT5....