Gran Turismo Creator Kazunori Yamauchi isn't new to racing. In particular he's a veteran of the prestigious Nurburgring 24h Endurance race, in which his team achieved a rather epic class victory last year.

Today (and tomorrow) he's challenging the hardest track in the world again with the Team GT Academy's #123 Nissan GT-R. The other members of the team will be Tobias Schulze and Yasukichi Yamamoto (founder of the popular Japanese tuning brand Opera Performance) that raced with him last year, joined by the first GT Academy winner Lucas Ordoñez.

The race started at 4 PM CEST (about four hours ago) and will continue throughout the night until the same hour tomorrow. Yamauchi and his team drive one of the only two cars of class SP 8T, and race against the other Nissan GT-R, the #23 of Team Nissan GT-R.

Unfortunately the competition didn't start well for Team GT Academy, as they got a flat tire a little more than three hours in, and are currently 55th on the ticker. Luckily the Nurburgring 24h is an endurance race, so nothing is lost yet, and Yamauchi isn't new to uphill battles. The team is currently recovering positions quickly (after the flat tire problem they were in 74th place).

You can follow the race on the official video livestream here, listen to the excellent commentary by Radiolemans.com, find the official ticker here and see the GPS positions of the cars on the track here.

There's also another piece of gaming on the track with the #2 Audi R8 LMS ultra of the Audi Sport Team Phoenix, sponsored by the PS Vita. It's currently in second place overall and battling for victory in the SP9 GT3 class.