Dempsey has indicated he’d be willing to give up acting for a racing career
A third-place finish at Virginia International Raceway was just what the doctor ordered for the driver who happens to play a doctor on TV.
As inauspiciously as the Aug. 22-24 Oak Tree Grand Prix weekend at VIR began for the star of the ABC series "Grey’s Anatomy," Patrick Dempsey did yeoman work behind the wheel of his No. 27 Dempsey Racing Porsche 911 GT America. Having wrecked the car during practice the day before the race, Dempsey drove from the rear of the field to third before handing the car over to co-driver Andrew Davis.
Davis solidified the third-place result to give Dempsey its first podium under the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship banner.
"It’s certainly one of the best drives I’ve ever had in the car and, I think, the overall performance as a team as well," Dempsey said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "I think it was a really, really strong performance by each and every member of our team that made that result possible.
"It was a breakthrough for us, and hopefully we can continue that momentum forward. It was a really enjoyable, really satisfying, really challenging weekend on all levels. We got a taste of everything emotionally, but it was very satisfying at the end of the day."
And as Dempsey prepares to take his GT Daytona (GTD) class entry to this weekend’s Lone Star Le Mans at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas, he believes his Dempsey Racing team may have turned a corner.
"We’ve had a struggle this year but really have been constantly working on it, developing the car and developing ourselves as individuals and as a team, and the results showed," said Dempsey, who finished third at COTA last year — pre-merger — in the American Le Mans Series Presented by Tequila Patrón GTC classification.
"So hopefully, we can do better than that going into this weekend. We’ll see. It’s so competitive in our series. To get any kind of podium is almost like a win for us."
According to Dempsey, the difficulty in achieving a top-level result speaks volumes about the level of competition throughout the field.
"Our category, GTD, is incredibly competitive – and the quality of drivers," he said. "If you look at qualifying, and you look at the lap times, they’re all so close. You really can’t afford to make any mistakes. You have to run a perfect race to get a good result.
"It was very difficult at the beginning of the year, but I think, because of that level of competition, it’s forced everybody to work that much harder, and it certainly drives me on a daily basis when I’m in training or I’m at the go-kart track or I’m in testing or I’m at the track that I work that much harder. So I think, ultimately, it’s really good, but incredibly challenging."
The challenge of racing is something Dempsey finds particularly compelling, so much so that he could imagine himself as a full-time driver. At Hockenheimring in Germany in July, where he competed as a guest driver in the Porsche Mobil 1 SuperCup, Dempsey indicated he might be willing give up acting for a racing career.
On Wednesday, he amplified those comments.
"Well, who wouldn’t? Wouldn’t you want to?" he asked with a robust laugh. "Quite honestly, I would love to devote myself 100 percent to racing and get in the car every day and do that. At this point, I can’t quite do it. And that’s not to take anything away from what I do as an actor. I really love acting as well. At this point, I’m very fortunate to have a development deal at ABC, so I can start to generate material that I can control and opportunities that can challenge me as an actor and as a producer.
"And that’s the same that can be said for different types of cars and different types of classes, of course, that you drive. One helps the other, and both are really important, and it’s a real challenge to be able to do both well and to be able to focus properly on each one of these things. In a perfect world, if I could not have to worry about financing a team and just race full-time, I would love to do that – but who wouldn’t?"
The immediate focus is Saturday’s 2-hour, 45-minute race at the 3.4-mile road course in Austin, an event that features entries in four classes (Daytona Prototype, Prototype Challenge, GT Le Mans and GTD) racing on the same track at the same time.
Dempsey says awareness of race traffic in the different classes is essential to running consistent laps times — that and a keen sense of the venue itself.
"Austin is much trickier than it appears to be," Dempsey said. "It’s a very nuanced track. It’s very challenging, and there’s a rhythm to it that can really be satisfying or really disturbing to you emotionally, if you don’t get it right.
"That’s the thing that I’ve been really concentrating on this week — looking at the track map, looking at my notes on the track and looking at some in-car video from Andrew Davis, my co-driver, and really getting a sense of it visually.
"There are subtle changes. There are a lot of things that look very similar, but when you start to dissect them, they’re not. There are small, little changes that you need to hit right to get a good lap time and be consistent."
If Austin is the immediate concern, Dempsey is crystal clear about his long-term holy grail in racing.
"I want to win Le Mans in class — that is my goal," said Dempsey, whose best finish in the vaunted 24-hour race was fourth in the GTE-AM classification in 2013. "We’ve been competitive the last few times we’ve been there. We’ve led the race both times (2013 and 2014). We were always in the fight, and we’ve just fallen short. But my goal is to really focus on and win Le Mans in class. That’s what I want to do, and that’s what we’re focusing on."
But first things first. This weekend, it’s the Lone Star Le Mans and an effort to sustain the momentum Dempsey Racing is carrying from VIR to Austin.
"We had a good run there last year," Dempsey said. "We just want to be consistent. We’ve got some new things on the car that will help performance.
"We’re not really running for the championship in the points battle, so we need to be conscious of who is out there and be competitive but be fair with those guys who are running for the championship and make sure we don’t interfere with that — but give them a run for their money and then have the best result we can."
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