Following in the footsteps of other Hollywood notables, but with his own winning touch, Patrick Dempsey’s class victory in last weekend’s General Tire Mint 400, March 20 – 24, with teammate Andy Lally and their co-driver Matt Crusin, was another career achievement for the popular actor and racer.
Competing in the oldest off-road race in North America, Dempsey and Lally scored a General Tire Mint 400 Class 5500 victory in a Zero One Odysseys spec-class car that successfully held-up to the beating the terrain and the drivers threw at it. Dempsey and Lally finished the grueling course in just over seven hours and 21 minutes, and just ahead of the Zero One West Coast Chill Sparco Girls team led by Dempsey Del Piero Racing team member Melissa Eickhoff and her teammates Pattie Mayer and Pilar Lastra.
Dempsey, who survived one flat tire, started the course south of Las Vegas before sunrise and drove the first and final of the race’s three laps for a total of 184 miles.
“It was amazing to race in the dirt again and win,” Dempsey said. “I dug into my Baja 1000 experience and went for it. Andy’s never done this kind of racing before, so it was fun to share it with him. He did great and the Zero One team was great. Even the girls rocked, considering all the taunting I’ve had to put up with. It was good fun racing.”
Lally is one of the top sports car road racers of his generation, but the Mint was his first off-road racing experience. He drove the middle stint of the race, one grueling 92-mile lap, and added a win in his off-road debut to his multiple sports car championships, victories in the Rolex 24 At Daytona and Petit Le Mans, and 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Rookie of the Year title.
“This is a race that wasn’t on the calendar but definitely one that I am super happy that I actually did,” Lally said. “I knew this was a big race, and I knew it was going to be a big challenge, and I think that because it came up so last second that it just helped me relax going into it. It is such a different world that what I do on a week-to-week basis now. I was basically there to support Patrick, he did the majority of the driving, and I learned a lot from him about off-road racing.”
Both Dempsey and Lally were quick to credit co-driver Crusin for playing a major part in the win. Co-drivers or co-pilots in this type of racing don’t actually drive, but perform the equally important tasks of coaching, working on the car during scheduled and unforeseen situations and keeping the car on track through a GPS.
“I had a total of about 10 minutes practice on some sand dunes the day before, just messing around, so I was learning on the fly,” Lally said. “I would have literally been lost without Matt, he was very knowledgeable mechanically about the car, was able to change a tire really, really fast and knew the course like the back of his hand. To be honest, I don’t know how he does it, to sit shot gun for over seven hours without a steering wheel in your hand or a foot on the brake or gas pedal. I am much more of a control freak than that!”
Dempsey, driving nearly 200 miles in his pair of laps, was at the wheel at the finish line for the 2013 race that was in part made famous by Hunter S. Thompson in his classic “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
Other actor/racers that have competed in the Mint include Steve McQueen and James Garner. The high-speed heritage Dempsey shares with McQueen, Garner and other Hollywood crossover racers, including Paul Newman, is a central storyline of an upcoming Discovery International and Velocity Networks four-episode miniseries documentary that has been in the works for over a year by The Planet Grande Pictures/Cathexis production team. The four one-hour shows, that chronicle Dempsey’s lead up and return to this June’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, will air in August, 2013.
Dempsey is a veteran of Baja 1000 competition, and now the Mint 400, but has spent the last few years in the top levels of sports car road racing in North America and beyond. He and Lally are fulltime teammates this year in the No. 27 Tully’s Coffee/Dempsey Del Piero Racing Porsche GT3 in the American Le Mans Series. Dempsey’s longtime motorsports business partner and co-driver Joe Foster joins the duo for select races in the No. 27 while their teammates Michael Avenatti and Andrew Davis team in the No. 27 Tully’s Coffee/Dempsey Del Piero Racing Porsche.
Source : Dempsey Racing