5th place finish for Gué and Keen @ VIR
DANVILLE, Va. (April 24, 2010) – The new No. 41 Team Seattle/Global Diving/Dempsey Racing Mazda RX-8 GT, with drivers James Gué and Leh Keen, finished a solid fifth in Saturday’s Bosch Engineering 250 at Virginia International Raceway (VIR) where their teammates Patrick Dempsey and Joe Foster overcame more than one issue to finish 12th in the No. 40 Dempsey Racing Mazda RX-8 GT.
“It was a good race with another top five and we finished ahead of three of the teams that were ahead of us in points,” said Gué, who started the race in the No. 41. “All in all, we did what we needed to do. It was a pretty quiet and low key sort of first hour or so but it certainly got a little exciting with some pushing and shoving at the end, but we brought it home for Team Seattle and Global Diving.”
Keen took over from Gué at the 45-minute mark and drove the final two hours of the race. His only major issue came during the No. 41’s final pit stop about an hour from the finish.
“The guys did a really good pit stop but then I just came out and didn’t give it quite enough wheel spin and stalled it out,” said Keen, who fell to eighth place after the miscue. “I got passed by three cars just like that before refiring it. There was a lot of hard racing going on, a lot of wheel-to-wheel and a little bit of bumping, but we managed to somehow get the positions back by the end of the race.”
Dempsey and Foster never quite had the chance to overcome their issues, which included weekend-long brake problems and a broken sway bar early in the race.
“We had a sway bar break and had a problem with the brakes locking up and were battling with that throughout the entire race,” said Dempsey, who was making his first GT start at VIR. “It’s unfortunate and we just tried to stick with everybody as much as possible to hold our position. I came in on the lead lap and handed it over to Joe and then we just struggled with all of those things after that. The big frustration is a 12th-place finish, really, but that’s racing.”
Like Keen in the No. 41 Team Seattle/Global Diving car, Foster drove the final two hours of the race in the No. 40.
“We had a great pit strategy which got us a lap back,” Foster said. “We fell back early when Patrick had the front sway bar break on the car and unfortunately that made for a very long afternoon because we just played catch-up and the car was just a handful to drive. So we did the best we could and good strategy kept us on the lead lap a couple of times. We did our best and ended up losing a lap again, but we kept going around and got some points and that’s all we can hope for.”
Next up for Dempsey Racing is a Memorial Day Monday race at Lime Rock Park where the GT class will be joined by the Daytona Prototype competitors for the first time on the 1.50-mile configuration of the classic Connecticut road course. The race can be seen live on SPEED at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT on Memorial Day Monday, May 31.
*** Race report courtesy of Dempsey Racing***
***Photo courtesy of www.coldtrackdays.com***
