Video gamer turns professional racer Children of Australia, next time your parents tell you to stop playing computer games because it's a waste of time remember the name Lucas Ordonez. He's a 28-year-old Spanish racing driver for Japanese car giant Nissan. He races all around the world in some of the fastest cars. But he didn't start his career in go-karts like the majority of his rivals. In fact, he didn't start his racing career in a vehicle of any kind. Ordonez was the first winner of the Nissan-PlayStation GT Academy in 2008 - a competition to find a computer game player with the ability to become a racing star in the real world. "I had a PlayStation at home, I wasn't playing games all day and all night, but I had Gran Turismo," Ordonez says. Then I saw an advertisement for the academy and I thought it was a great opportunity. So I bought a steering wheel [game accessory] and started to train. And that training paid off. Ordonez was one of 22 finalists from Europe, whittled down from more than 25,000 entrants put through a week-long series of tests and on-screen races. It wasn't just driving ability the judges assessed. Gamers were tested for physical fitness, mental attitude and media savvy as well. Ordonez admits he wasn't a natural, but he showed consistent improvement and earned his prize - a drive in the 2009 Dubai 24-hour endurance race in a Nissan 350Z. Four years later Ordonez is firmly established as one of Nissan's star drivers. He has raced in the famous Le Mans 24-hour race in a prototype sports car (finishing on the podium twice), will be competing in the FIA GT world series in a Nissan GT-R and this week came to Australia to test a V8 supercar, which he might drive in the Bathurst 1000 in 2014. Ordonez says his new career is a dream come true. Absolutely. I never expected it," he says. But I really pushed hard and made a really, really big effort. Everything turned out really well for us and we started to get good feedback from all the motor sport and gaming world and that's how GT Academy is also growing. Ordonez admits the switch for virtual to real motor racing does have its challenges. And the biggest risk was made all too clear in this year's Le Mans race when Danish driver Allan Simonsen was killed in an accident. "In Gran Turismo you can push 110 per cent and if you crash, you re-start," Ordonez says. In real life if you crash, you can hurt yourself. But he says he has accepted the risk and has thrived in his new career. Nissan recently began a global driver-exchange program that gives drivers from its various racing series around the world the chance to compete in different cars. It says a lot about Ordonez' standing with Nissan that he has been chosen to be the star driver of the program. He's a lot busier than he was when he was studying for a business degree in Madrid six years ago. "It's been a crazy-busy schedule for me," he says. Three weeks ago I was in Japan, then I flew back for the Spa 24-hours race, then I had the Pirelli World Challenge in the US. I flew back home for 24 hours, and now Australia, and next week Japan and then California. It's non-stop but it's a very cool program. The downside of his new life as a globe-trotting racing driver is he doesn't actually get much time to play PlayStation any more, even though he's helping develop the new Gran Turismo 6 game. I still like to play but I've got no time for it now. The few minutes I spend at home are with my family.