Grey's Anatomy actor Patrick Dempsey was amongst those drivers to take to the track during the latest Grand Am Rolex Series test session at
Daytona as he prepares to make his first start in the Rolex 24.
Dempsey took part in a shakedown of the #40 Hyper Sport SoBe Mazda RX-8 he will share with co-drivers Charles Espenlaub and Joe Foster and he admitted it was good to spend time at the wheel away from the pressures of a race weekend.
“It's really good to have some time to test properly without the pressure of a race day,” he said. “I can go and get some feedback from the data and really start to improve specific sections of the track where I'm losing time. That's really important when I'm driving with Joe and Charles, to kind of keep on their pace or get as close to it as possible and then just be consistent.
“I'm really happy to have a day where we're relaxed and going about it properly and not trying to play catch up constantly.”
With television production being halted due to the Writer's Guild of America strike, Dempsey admitted he was finding plenty of time to prepare for the big race.
“It's real quiet right now – the writer's strike – so it's giving me a great opportunity to go racing,” he added. “It's really good because I've worked like three-and-a-half years straight there without a break. I've finally had the last five weeks off so I could start to do some training for this and get ready.
“We get to test here and then we will come back in January and then we will be ready for the race. If I can get some more testing in where it's really low key like this it makes a big difference for me. It takes the pressure off. I can go out, I can push the car a lot more and I can make a mistake and it's OK.”
![Actor Patrick Dempsey has taken a co-ownership role with Vision Racing for 2006 [pic credit: IRL/Michael Voorhees]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/193756.jpg)
