Two Gran Turismo Academy drivers, who graduated from online to the real world, have won the Bathurst 12 Hour race in real life.

The GT Academy exists in the world of Gran Turismo where it finds the best virtual drivers. It then plucks them out and plonks them into real world cars and trains them up before entering them in real world races.

The GT Academy has been running for four years and this year is the first time it's had its drivers beat real world drivers to the prize in their first attempt.

The GT Academy was created in 2008 by Sony and Polyphony in collaboration with Nissan Europe. The result is four seasons of a TV show that's filmed from start to finish of the experience. That includes narrowing down from thousands of online entrants, taking top performers to a boot camp at Silverstone Racing Circuit in England, before finding champs to enter in a real race.

Wolfgang Reip and Florian Strauss won the Bathurst 12 Hour race this weekend in the RJN Motorsport Nissan GTR-35. Reip won the online champs in 2012 with Strauss taking the title in 2013. In the real world race they had a third driver in their team, Katsumasa Chiyo, who was fastest of the three.

GT Academy 2011 winner Jann Mardenborough is expected to race in the 24 hour Le Mans this June in the Nissan GTR-LM.

READ: Gran Turismo 6 review