No. 41 Team Seattle/Global Diving Mazda RX-8 GT Finishes

Seventh In Challenging Day for Dempsey Racing At Daytona

Seventh Top-10 for Gué and Keen; No. 40 Share a Little Sunshine Mazda Knocked Out of Race

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (July 3, 2010) – A tough day for Dempsey Racing on the high-banked 3.56-mile road course at Daytona International Speedway saw James Gué and Leh Keen fight to a seventh-place finish in the No. 41 Team Seattle/Global Diving/Dempsey Racing Mazda RX-8 GT while the No. 40 Share a Little Sunshine/Dempsey Racing Mazda RX-8 GT was knocked out of the race by a Daytona Prototype (DP) while contending for a possible top-five finish in Saturday's Brumos Porsche 250 At Daytona.

“Overall the car was pretty good,” said Gué, who joined co-driver Keen for their seventh consecutive top-10 finish. “We were one of the better Mazdas today but we are sort of racing in a different group of cars there with some of the others being faster right now.  We got off to a good start there but kind of got shuffled a little bit near the end of the first stint.  It is just kind of the nature of how things are going, the restarts and the tire wear you have late in a stint, with them going off a little bit.  I didn’t hand the car off in as good a position as I usually do with Leh, but the car was strong. We had a solid run but this is a tough series.”

The No. 41 ran as low as 12^th early in the race’s second hour but Keen managed to gain a few spots despite a late-race spin.

“We were pushing, and maybe pushing a little bit too hard and I kind of got tangled up with another GT car and had a spin,” Keen said.  “That costs us some positions and little bit of time and I am bummed out about that and feel sorry for the guys. The car was actually pretty good there at the end and we were running a pretty good pace.  It looks like the Porsches and the Turner BMW M6 are kind of in a different class, especially at this track.  It kind of shines and you can see it easier.  So we just ran our race, ran tough and ran as hard as we could and it all didn’t really go our way, or the way we wanted it too, but the car is still in one piece.”

The No. 40 Share a Little Sunshine team also didn’t see things go their way or the race’s checkered flag.  After taking over from starting driver and Patrick Dempsey stand-in Charles Espenlaub, Joe Foster was positioned for a likely top-five finish, only to be knocked out of the race by an overly-aggressive Daytona Prototype competitor in the second horseshoe turn of the Daytona circuit.

Next up for Dempsey Racing and the GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series is the New Jersey Motorsports Park 250 presented by Crown Royal on NJMP’s Thunderbolt Raceway, July 16 – 18. The race can be seen live on SPEED, Sunday, July 18 at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT.