10th place finish @ Mid-Ohio
Damage on car No.41 after last lap incident
LEXINGTON, Ohio (June 19, 2010) – James Gué and Leh Keen earned a top-10 finish in the No. 41 Team Seattle/Global Diving/Dempsey Racing Mazda RX-8 GT after a tough afternoon.
The 2-3/4-hour timed race was an up-and-down contest for both Dempsey Racing Mazda teams, at times seemingly headed to victory lane and at other moments coming close to literally being knocked out of the race. Both teams led the race – the first time this season for the No. 40 and the first time ever both Dempsey Mazdas led in the same race – and in the opening hour ran in both first and second place positions. In total, Gué led seven laps in the No. 41 while Foster set the pace for three laps in the No. 40.
Both the No. 40 and No. 41, however, overcame several contact incidents, including one that knocked the door open on Espenlaub, and another on the final lap of the race that forced Keen to limp to the finish.
“It was a crazy race, for sure,” Foster said. “We got to the front and led a little bit and ran second for a while to the No. 41 car, which is great to have both Mazdas up there, so it was a good day for the team in that sense. Charles was hit by a Daytona Prototype and had two flat tires so we had to pit under green, which dropped us back to eighth or ninth, but he made it back to sixth. He did a fantastic job and we made a bit of a fuel gamble at that stop, and actually changed our strategy completely. We went to fuel conservation mode, and that’s what worked. We weren’t the fastest car out there, but we were certainly a top-five car today, so we are chipping away at it.”
Gué and Keen finished off of the podium for the first time in the last three races and persevered through their toughest race since the season-opening Rolex 24. Keen also wasn’t able to score his third consecutive Mid-Ohio GT victory after winning here in 2008 and last year.
“We just had a bad race all around, it happens” Keen said. “This stuff is not easy and we really never had anything going our away. Then I got hit by another GT car right on the last lap and pretty much taken straight out in the last corner. I drove an entire lap with a flat tire and it just killed us.”
The race had six full-course caution periods, including several in the first hour of the race, which slowed the field for 24 of the race’s 107 laps.
“It was one of those races where I think everyone was sort of second guessing themselves on strategy throughout the race because there was just so many yellows right off the bat,” Gué said. “It was sort of luck of the draw of when you took them and when you didn’t. We learn every weekend and we learn from the good moves and you learn from the bad ones as well. Certainly not our best day of the year but no doubt we will rebound and be strong at Daytona.”
Next up for Dempsey Racing is the Brumos Porsche 250 At Daytona which can be seen live on SPEED at 11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT on Saturday, July 3.
