In May, tragedy struck in a harrowing incident involving the Nissan racer when competing at one of racing’s most formidable challenges: the Nürburgring 24 Hours.
Mardenborough was running strongly in the race when it all went very wrong at the Flugplatz section.
“The car went very light at the front,” he remembered. “And next thing, you’re just looking at sky. I just closed my eyes, took my hands off the steering wheel, tried to brace myself.”
His Nissan GT3 car flipped, flew off the track, vaulted the barrier and killed one spectator as well as injuring several others.
“You’re behind the wheel, and it’s massive guilt,” he said afterwards. “It’s something I wouldn’t want anyone else to experience. It stays with you, someone has lost their life – it’s never going to go away. It’s still difficult to talk about.”
Trying to process what had happened, Mardenborough tested at his local Pembrey track within a week: “I wanted to know that I could function in my job with that weight – I was supposed to be shaking down this Formula Renault car down for Carlin and do 20 laps, but I did 90.”
Le Mans LMP1 outing ended in disaster
Getty Images
Amazingly, just weeks later Mardenborough was racing at Le Mans, at the wheel of Nissan’s innovative – or ill-advised, depending on your viewpoint – Nissan GT-R LMP1 car. The front-engined, front-wheel-drive, Ben Bowlby-designed prototype proved both spectacularly slow and unreliable, apparently rushed into competition by race organiser ACO, which was keen to boost Le Mans numbers.
Nissan’s fastest car was over 20sec off the LMP1 pole time, and slower than some LMP2 cars.
Two cars retired from the race, including Mardenborough’s which caught fire, and the third limped to the finish but wasn’t classified due to not completing sufficient distance.
As Mardenborough succinctly put it after the race: “motor sport kicks you in the balls sometimes.” He has never raced at Le Mans since.
2023: Gran Turismo – The Movie released
Since 2015 Mardenborough has competed primarily in the Japanese SuperGT championship, winning one race in the lower GT300 class. His latest outing again came in Japan, finishing third overall at the 2023 Fuji 24 Hours.
In recent years, another chapter has slowly gathered pace in Mardenborough’s story: a $200m dollar feature length film based on his life, starring Hollywood royalty Orlando Bloom, Stranger Things star David Harbour and up-and-coming actor Archie Madekwe.
“It’s all very surreal,” says one of the world’s fastest gamers, who says he had a lot of input into the film “not only on the stunts, but also the script since very early. I’ve been involved [in the project] for years.”
The film reaches a climax with Mardenborough’s Le Mans podium, rather than the Nissan LMP1 disaster, but doesn’t leave out the 2015 Nürburgring tragedy.
“It’s my life; it’s part of my story,” he said to Sunday Times Driving. “So I feel it would have been a disservice for the audience for that not to be in there.
Gamer-turned-racer was involved with stunt driving and script in film of his life
Gran Turismo
“I made sure all of us that were with the production — the producers, Jason the scriptwriter — that that was how it went down. Because it needed to be correct, because somebody lost their life in this accident.”
Mardenborough’s life has been nothing short of inspirational, something which he is well aware of.
“You don’t have to be a person with loads of money stashed away to fund your racing career,” he says. “You can just be a normal person who loves racing games and motor sport, and there is a route for you if you’re good at it – you can achieve great things.
“I can remember the first time I played Gran Turismo 1 on a 30in TV screen, with the worst pixel count you could imagine, and had just so much fun doing that. Then fast-forward 15 years and you’re doing it for real. It’s weird – but it’s really cool.”