Throughout the history of motorsports several Hollywood actors have had aspirations to be professional racecar drivers. Steve McQueen and the late Paul Newman come to mind, both of whom were very successful, and some modern era actors have also had a go at it too like Jason Priestley, Eric Bana and the annoyingly ignorant Franky Muniz. Adding to that list is Gray's Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey, who has competed in the Daytona 24 Hour Race and the Baja 1000 and has been competing in Grand Am's GT class since 2007. This June he'll be stepping up his game even further when he takes on the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Team Seattle and last year's Grand-Am Koni Challenge champion, Joe Foster. Dempsey will be driving a Ferrari F430 GT prepared by Advanced Engineering who has previously won the GT2 category in the FIA GT, although he'll have his hands full taking on the likes of factory-supported teams from Porsche, BMW, Panoz, and Ferrari. We wish him the best of luck!

 

I'd like to see how he does. Judging by his Daytona 24 performance all I can say is that they better have two or three very good drivers to round out the team. It sounds like a good publicity move for Team Seattle with it being a charity benefitting outfit, but I don't see a possible front runner here. Oh well, maybe the team will finish well and we will no longer be forced to listen to the "McDreamy" crap when we're trying to watch sports car racing.
As a second question, has there been any evidence that an e92 M3 GT2 will be at the great race. In there first year of development that would be pretty amazing for a GT2 car. I know one will be at the Nurburgring 24, and that is pretty close to Le Mans weekend.

 

You have to focus on driving to be a professional racer.

 

yah but Macdreamy can do whatever he wants

every rule has exceptions

 

He's a very good gentleman driver.

 

Exactly. He brings a lot of publicity to every series he competes in and while his skills can't quite lead him to the podium, he's good enough to stay out of the way.

Plus, if women actually start watching racing as a result of McDreamy competing, it just makes it easier to seal the deal with them trackside!

 

Good point indeed. Team Seattle could use the publicity as well. I guess its just jealousy b/c I want to be driving a GT2 twice around the clock at Le Mans.

 

I raced against Patrick in the Panoz series. I am sure he's improved significantly since and he was pretty good back then. He never claims to more than a gentleman driver learning from the real pros.

With that said, he'd kick most the DE Champs that lurk around on various forums.

 

I wonder how Mazda feels about this? (since he is their poster boy)

 

I give him props just for being a real car guy unlike the guys on Cribs that show there rented car collections.