1 an après leur fabuleuse 3ème place sur le circuit de Daytona, nous retrouvons la Dempsey Racing pour leur toute première course de la saison 2012.
Pour Rappel en 2011, la #40 réalisait une belle prestation en se plaçant sur la dernière marche du podium après avoir été leader pendant 20 tour durant la nuit.

« It’s an honor to be part of the 50th running of the Rolex 24 At Daytona
and we are proud as a team to be starting our fifth Rolex 24 in a row,”�
Dempsey said. Of course, our “Cinderella” run to the podium last year in
the Share a Little Sunshine No. 40 Mazda is my best memory of Daytona, as well as leading for more than 20 laps at night.We will continue to do our
best for Mazda, VISIT FLORIDA and the Seattle Children's Hospital this year
with a two-car effort”

Malgré des séances d'essais et une séance de qualification peu satisfaisante, tous les pilotes étaient impatients de prendre part à la course.
P1 : 28ème 1:52.191
P2 : 27ème 1 :52.301
Qualifications : 27ème 1 :51.416
P3 : 26ème 1 :51.999


Malgré tous les efforts que les pilotes ont produits penant 24h, Patrick Dempsey, Joe Foster, Charles Espenlaub et Tom Long finiront à la 10ème place de la catégorie GT.

Cependant les pilotes sont loin d'être déçus, et sont même fière de leur équipe qui a fait un excellent travail pour les mener la où ils en sont !

«I’m so proud of the team, I can’t get over it, Dempsey said. “They just worked so hard all week, all through the testing. We had a lot of adversity, they overcame it, and just the consistency with the 40 car was great. Charles, Joe, Tom, Charlie, everybody did a great job. Really,
really consistent, solid performance and as a team I couldn’t be happier.
To say coming into this weekend, we’d be coming out of here with a top-10
finish I would have been thrilled, completely. We stayed out of trouble,
drove within ourselves, didn’t take too many risks and it paid off in the
end. »�

We’re hopefully going testing to improve the package that we have,” Foster said.”We’re going to do a little testing at Barber Motorsports Park, if we can, and just work on every aspect of the process. Considering the state of competition in GT right now, to finish 10th in our car was outstanding.Obviously we had a different kind of race this year than we had last year. We had to really come back from some adversity this year. We had some people say the 41 car was a write-off but it was on the track less
than three hours after it got hit.”

“The No. 41 was heavily damaged Saturday night after a blatant bump-and-run hit from another GT competitor, but the Dempsey Racing crew never thought for a minute about giving up. After lengthy repairs, the No. 41 returned to the race Saturday evening and team drivers Don Kitch Jr., Rick Johnson, Dan Rogers, Ian James and Scott Maxwell did their part to get the stricken car to the finish line in 27th place. »

« It’s really hard to be out of the car that long, I need to get some testing in,” Dempsey said.

“Getting the 41 car back out there and raising $150,000 for the Team Seattle Guild is fantastic,”� Dempsey said. I think that’s great.”

"We finally got some miles on the VISIT FLORIDA/ShareaLittleSunshine.org
car today," Foster said. "I think we're still definitely chasing our tails
a little bit set-up wise. Obviously, there's a pretty big disparity
between the cars inside the GT class, which we're trying to deal with. So,
we're just trying to be the best Mazda we can be and come back with both
guns blazing at the race. We're very frustrated in not getting the 41 guys
running the whole time, but we definitely got a lot of the bad luck out of
the way.We're looking forward to the race."

"I can't be happier to be back with Dempsey Racing and want to thank VISIT FLORIDA and Mazda for the opportunity,"� Long said. It's just so exciting to be here with Dempsey Racing and what we shared last year with the 24-hour podium finish was just the most special experience I had in a race car. To be able to be back and do that again is just going to be great. I'm really, really proud and excited to be here for that."

C'est avec beaucoup d'impatience que les pilotes attendent donc le 26 Janvier pour début les essais de ces 24h de Daytona !

A noter que nous retrouverons aussi Charles Espenlaub et Charlie Putman au volant de la #41 de la Dempsey Racing après le départ de Dane Cameron passé chez Sahlen
Toute fois Charles Espenlaub et Charlie Putman courrons sur la #40 pour les 24h de Daytona puisque la #41 sera conduite par Scott Maxwell,James,Don Kitch Jr, Johnson, et Rogers pour le Team Seattle.

Rendez vous le 28 Janvier pour la course !

Credit Photo Dempsey Racing