Dempsey Racing Mazda RX-8 GT Teams Double Up On Driver Changes and Top-10 Finishes at Barber Motorsports Park
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (April 9, 2011) – Dempsey Racing doubled-up on driver changes and top-10 finishes Saturday in the Porsche 250 at Barber Motorsports Park where Dane Cameron and James Gué finished sixth in the No. 41 Team Seattle/Global Diving & Salvage Mazda RX-8 GT, and Patrick Dempsey, Joe Foster and Charles Espenlaub co-drove the No. 40 VISIT FLORIDA/ModSpace/Construct Corps Mazda RX-8 GT to an eighth-place finish. The race will air tomorrow on SPEED, Sunday, April 10, at Noon ET/9 a.m. PT.
For the first time since Dempsey expanded to a two-car operation last year, both the No. 40 and No. 41 teams each made two driver changes in a sprint race. Cameron started the No. 41, after winning both his and Dempsey Racing’s first pole on Friday, and then took the wheel again for the final 45 minutes after Gué drove a long stint in the middle of the race. The No. 40 not only had two driver changes, but also three different drivers, with Dempsey starting, Foster driving the middle stint and Espenlaub taking the car to the checkered flag. Temperatures in the 80-degree range and Birmingham’s high humidity were among the factors taken into account for the unprecedented number of driver swaps.
“James and I kind of toughed it out and I can’t thank him enough for being able to drive as long as he did in the middle of the race,” Cameron said. “I have been not feeling so well all week, so I was absolutely shot, but the car was really, really good. We were one of the fastest cars out there, for sure, and we just drove right away. That first 20 minutes of the race we were just walking away with it, the car was good, it was good on the tires and I was running qualifying laps just over, over and over.”
Cameron pulled out to a huge lead but the first of the race’s three caution periods should have given him even more of an advantage. A “wave-by that wasn’t” proved to be frustrating for all on the team.
“The yellows didn’t really fall our way, but all you can do is the best you can do with what you have control of,” Foster said. “Everything we had control of today we did pretty well. The 41 guys finished sixth, Dane drove a fantastic opening stint and pitted the car in the lead. There was some confusion, or really frustration, on our part, to be honest, with the rules because Dane did not get a wave-by on the first yellow when he was the only GT car in front of the overall leader. At that point he should have got a lap up on the field, but that didn’t happen for some reason.”
Gué ran as high as third as the No. 41 team rallied to rebound from the missed opportunity and ultimately the sixth-place finish.
“It is frustrating that we don’t have the result to show that we are improving as a group,” Cameron said. “Hopefully some time soon one of these will fall our way, we will have some luck.”
Dempsey and his teammates felt a little unlucky too, but persevered through a broken front sway bar issue in the No. 40. Dempsey left Barber pleased with his team’s first pole and his own personal-best performance in qualifying.
“We have a lot to look at when we get back to work on,” Dempsey said. “I think we have a lot of things we should be happy about this week, getting our first pole here is really great. A little frustrating too, we started eighth and finished eighth, we just didn’t have any luck. Something on the front-end of the car broke, it was a sway bar, and that really hurt us a little bit, so we got stuck where we kind of were, and that was it. I learned a lot, I thought my pace was good, and I was really happy with my qualifying. I was really very conservative during the race, I just wanted to save the car and really protect myself against the heat. I got out of the car and it felt good, we were right where we wanted to be, but then it didn’t go our way after that.”
Gué left Barber frustrated that the early advantage his teammate seemingly earned never happened.
“I guess, big picture, it wasn’t a bad day but, honestly, I am extremely disappointed,” Gué said. “Dane did a really good job, we had a lot better car than sixth, and it’s just frustrating to leave a place and you don’t have anything to show for it.”
Next up for Dempsey Racing is the Bosch Engineering 250 at Virginia International Raceway, May 13 – 14. The race can be seen in same-day “virtual live” coverage on Saturday, May 14, at 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT.
Noteworthy
- Foster and co-driver Scott Maxwell drove the No. 15 Ford Racing/Multimatic Motorsports Mustang Boss 302 R to victory from the pole in Saturday’s GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Series race. Foster and Maxwell won the same race in a Mustang at Barber in 2008, also from the pole. Foster was at the wheel for both pole-winning efforts and was also the top qualifier for last year’s Continental race, going three-for-three in pole-winning qualifying efforts at Barber. He didn’t compete in the series at Barber in 2009. “Really, it was all about managing the tire wear today,” Foster said. “At the end, it was kind of a battle between everybody with no grip, and Scott won out. He’s very good at driving in the rain too. It was a fantastic day for us.”
- Espenlaub is the reigning GRAND-AM Continental Tire GS Co-Champion but a tough race for him today played a part in the decision to add him to the No. 40 team for the Rolex Series race. “Joe, having won the Continental race, obviously drove a good bit there, and unfortunately my motor blew up in that race, so I didn’t get to drive at all. So they said ‘come on over’ to see how they would feel and it kind of fit the strategy for me to get in there at the end. I love driving with Joe and Patrick, and all of the guys here, we are like a big family, so it was great to be able to drive.”
- Getting Espenlaub behind the wheel made the weekend all that much better for Dempsey. “We are having fun together, and that’s our team right there, along with the 41 car,” Dempsey said. “Charles had some really bad luck in the Continental race earlier, so we thought we would put him in our car and have a good time.”
About Dempsey Racing
A fulltime and year-round enterprise, Dempsey Racing (www.dempseyracing.net) is a professional sports car auto racing team based in the greater Atlanta area in Norcross, Georgia. Owned by actor/driver Patrick Dempsey, the team races in support of the Team Seattle Guild (www.teamseattle.com) to benefit the Seattle Children’s Hospital Heart Center (www.seattlechildrens.org) and the Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing (www.dempseycenter.org) in Dempsey’s hometown of Lewiston, Maine.
Dempsey Racing Partners
Dempsey Racing is an official Mazda (www.mazdausa.com) racing team and has competed exclusively in Mazda RX-8 GTs since 2007. Additional team partners include Global Diving & Salvage (www.gdiving.com), the largest diving contractor on the West Coast, VISIT FLORIDA (www.VISITFLORIDA.com), the official tourism marketing corporation for the State