Before Gran Turismo Inspired A Movie, It Led Jann Mardenborough To Greatness

Realistic cars and tracks from the PlayStation video game helped Jann Mardenborough find his calling as a professional driver.

Jann Mardenborough can vividly recount the first time he played Gran Turismo, the popular racing video game that would completely change his life.

While seeking refuge on Bonfire Night, At a UK party full of fireworks, 8-year-old Mardenborough stumbled upon gambling at his neighbours' house. He picked up a purple Mitsubishi 3000GT and started racing on the Autumn Ring track. Mardenborough continued to play this game all night and then every day thereafter, showing up on his neighbors' doorstep immediately after school.

" They were so fed up with When I came to their house one day my wife came across the street, knocked on our door and had the PlayStation and the GT 1 in her hand and gave it to my parents,” he said. the 31-year-old racing driver recently recalled during a video interview.

This is the origin story of the other origin story: the true and unlikely portrayed in the film 'Gran Turismo', directed by Neill Blomkamp and which opens Friday.The film dramatizes Mardenborough's journey from playing in his bedroom to winning the 2011 GT Academy - an annual competition that , from 2008 to 2016, put the game's best players in real vehicles - right up to professional formula car driving.

The eight main games of the Gran Turismo franchise, which debuted in Europe and North America in 1998, are known for their meticulously reproduced cars and demanding racing simulations. In the months leading up to his entry into GT Academy, Mardenborough went from a plastic PlayStation controller to a homemade wooden racing frame with a steering wheel and pedal he bought with money his parents gave him good grades in exchange.

The competition was a boon for Mardenborough, who was trying to sell auto parts on eBay after losing a job in retail Retail ; he had dropped out of school after realizing that studying motorsport engineering did not mean he could actually drive cars.

Even so, Mardenborough continued to is said to be skeptical of his chances. He had played no more Gran Turismo than an average teenager after his initial fixation, had never entered a tournament, and had virtually no experience driving a normal car. The first time he took his rickety laser blue 1991 BMW E30 down a highway was when he was on his way to the competition.

The point Mardenborough's view took a visceral turn when he qualified for race camp. — a stretch depicted in the film that follows the finalists training in real cars — and got his first glimpse of the track.

“After my first few laps, "I got out of the car, I remember thinking, 'I don't want to live life and never experience this again,'" said Mardenborough, who served as a producer on "Gran Turismo" and understudy for his own character.< /p>

ImageDirector Neill Blomkamp, ​​center, and Mardenborough, right , on the set of "Gran Turismo." Mardenborough was his own character's stuntman. Credit... Gordon Timpen/Columbia Pictures/Sony Entertainment, via Associated Press

Mardenborough can eagerly describe the technical details that set the game apart from reality — the feel , for example, vibration through the car seat — but said much of the real-world feel and feedback reflected Gran Turismo.

“ When "You race against real people," he said, "everything is real."

Mardenborough, who is played by Archie Madekwe in "Gran Turismo ", went line by line with Sony about early drafts of the script...