Patrick Dempsey and Andy Lally raced the No. 27 Dempsey Racing Porsche 911 GT3 Cup to their second podium finish of the 2013 American Le Mans Series (ALMS) season Saturday with a third-place showing at Circuit of The Americas in the competitive GT Challenge (GTC) class.
The top-three finish was the first in four months for both the team and drivers after scoring a season-best second-place result at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in mid-May. The result also broke a consistent but increasingly frustrating streak that saw Dempsey and Lally finish fourth in the last three ALMS GTC races at Baltimore, Road America and Mosport Canadian Tire Motorsports Park.
“It’s really nice to be on the podium here, in front of the WEC and everybody, it is a great facility,” Dempsey said. “Really tough track though, and the heat today, but Andy drove a great race, the guys did a real good job on the setup and great pit stops. It is just nice to get past fourth finally.”
Dempsey drove the race’s opening hour before handing off to Lally who rejoined in sixth place.
“When I got in I knew we had a pretty good car and I just went straight to it,” Lally said. “It was qualifying laps for an hour and 45 minutes. Just flat out, trying to close the delta and move forward.”
Lally raced down both Jan Heylen and pre-race points leader Jeroen Bleekemolen to advance to fourth place.
“I could see we were closing on Jan, and I could see we were closing on Jeroen,” Lally said. “The car was fast enough to reel them both in, we were able to get up to fourth and for the first time this year we got a little lucky on the attrition side, and it put us on the podium.”
With less than 15 minutes remaining in the timed 2-3/4 hour race it looked like the Dempsey team was destined for another fourth-place finish. The No. 27 moved up to third when championship-contender Spencer Pumpelly made a late stop for a splash of fuel.
“They said it failed,” Lally said. “But I think the guys disconnected my radio button on purpose so I wouldn’t keep asking where we were! They did a pretty good job keeping me updated and I got the call when Spence came to pit lane. I feel bad for him because I know he is in a championship. He is a real good friend of mine.”
Lally is now two-for-two in podiums at COTA after finishing second in the GT class last March in the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series race. Dempsey was making his first race start on the 3.4-mile track after a couple of promotional appearances last year.
“The challenge here is that you always feel like you are in traffic,” Dempsey said. “I had a good start but then lost a lot of positions in traffic. It just got us out of position but our strategist Lars Giersing made a good call early on. We had some difficulty with the pit stop but in the end we finally just had some luck come our way, which was very nice.”
Next up for the American Le Mans Series and Dempsey Racing is the Oak Tree Grand Prix and Virginia International Raceway (VIR), October 3 – 5. The race can be seen live online at ESPN3 on Saturday, October 5, at 2 p.m. EDT with an encore telecast the next day, Sunday, October 6, at 5:30 p.m. EDT/2:30 p.m. PT on ESPN2.
NOTEWORTHY
- Lally gave credit to Heylen after their battle for position. “I have to say one thing, Jan raced me really clean,” Lally said. “He could have taken advantage of a couple of opportunities to block the heck out of me, but he didn’t, he was cool.”
