WATKINS GLEN, N.Y – Dempsey Racing’s Mazda RX-8 GTs each overcame setbacks in Saturday’s Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen for the Dempsey squad’s best total-team performance in three months, including the second top-three podium finish in five days for James Gué and Leh Keen No. 41 Team Seattle/Global Diving/Dempsey Racing Mazda RX-8 GT.
The No. 41 recovered from a pit stop miscommunication to finish third while Joe Foster and Charles Espenlaub charged back from an early spin in the rain to finish a solid seventh in the No. 40 Dempsey Racing Mazda RX-8 GT. The finishes match the results from early March’s Grand Prix of Miami, which was the site of Dempsey’s previous top team performance earlier this season.
The No. 41’s Miami result was the first podium finish for the Dempsey Racing team and Gué and Keen have since moved into GT championship contention at the halfway point of the 2010 season. The team has made it to victory lane in half of the season’s first six races and a win even seemed likely in the Watkins Glen race. The No. 41 was up front for a class-leading 49 laps but the car dropped back to sixth after the pit stop error near the end of the race. Keen then staged a dramatic charge through the field and pressured the second-place No. 70 Castrol Syntec/SpeedSource Mazda RX-8 GT of Jonathan Bomarito to the finish.
“We are a little bit disappointed but at the end of the day the whole team, with where we have come from, what we have been doing and how we have been improving each race, should be pleased with a podium,” Gué said. “Leh did a phenomenal job at the end there to pull us out of a little bit of a hole. Every time we hit the track we learn new lessons and I certainly wouldn’t place the blame on anyone in particular for the pit miscue. As they say, we win as a team and we lose as a team, but you can’t second guess yourself in these races. We committed to a strategy, stuck with it and still managed to get another podium.”
Keen led a race-high 40 laps while Gué was up front for nine circuits.
“As far as the Rolex Series goes, I am really pumped,” said Keen, who leaves Monday to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. “We’ve really, really got it going now with two podiums in a row. We were so strong at The Glen and we are halfway through the season now and we are figuring all of this stuff out still, but we have figured out a lot so far. We were right up front the whole time, pretty much, but I had the car up underneath me to claw back on to the podium. I have to thank the Dempsey guys for doing such a great job and James was awesome in his last stint there, he just killed it. I am happy, I will take a podium any day, and we will win a race.”
The No. 41 Mazda team also finished a Dempsey Racing career-best second this past Memorial Day Monday at Lime Rock Park. The No. 40 Mazda of Foster and Espenlaub in turn had its best finish in the last four races at The Glen with the seventh-place result. Foster joined his regular teammate and Dempsey Racing business partner Patrick Dempsey in finishing seventh for the first time this season in Miami and duplicated that result with Espenlaub this past weekend.
“Perseverance was the key and the Dempsey guys did a great job,” Espenlaub said. “Our pit stops were absolutely flawless and the team is really coming along with that. We made up a lot of time early after going a lap down and just tried to dig back from there.”
Although the No. 40 could never work its way back on to the lead lap after the early spin, the team’s second seventh-place showing of the season ranks behind only a sixth in the season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona as the best result of the year.
“We did have a reasonably good car today but I threw it off in the rain early,” Foster said. “That didn’t help but I got back on and we sort of watched the rest of the race unfold from a lap down. Both Charles and I stayed in the lead pack, but just a lap down. It was good but frustrating at the same time. We have got a little more pace out of the car, which is good, but we had some bad luck in the wet, which happened to a bunch of cars. I made a mistake, which happens, but I haven’t done that in a long time.”
Next up for the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series and Dempsey Racing is the EMCO Gear Classic at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, June 18 - 19.
NOTEWORTHY
- All four Dempsey Racing drivers also raced in Saturday morning’s GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge series before the Sahlen’s Six Hours. Espenlaub and his teammate Charles Putman won in their No. 48 Fall-Line Motorsports BMW M3 to stay in championship contention. “We are feeling pretty good and, I have to say, it feels like our year,” Espenlaub said.
- Among Espenlaub’s challengers at the end of the Continental race was Keen, who co-drives the No. 44 Magnus Racing Porsche Cayman with John Potter. Despite being Rolex Series teammates at Dempsey, Keen and Espenlaub weren’t afraid to trade a little paint in the race’s closing laps, although it knocked Keen from contention. “The Continental series is always about bumping and banging and when I finally made my move, we just rubbed wheels and it knocked my valve stem off,” Keen said.
- Keen will make his Le Mans debut next weekend with former GRAND-AM Rolex Series teammate Dominik Farnbacher in a Hankook Tire/Farnbacher Racing Ferrari F430 GT2. The car is similar to the one Dempsey, Foster and Team Seattle’s Don Kitch Jr. drove to a ninth-place class finish in the French classic last year. Keen, Farnbacher and two other drivers also finished second in the Ferrari in last month’s 24 Hours of Nurburgring.
For more information on the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series visit http://www.grand-am.com/
