Dempsey to race Mazda3 at Long Beach

Patrick Dempsey will join the GTS grid at Long Beach in a Mazda3, run by the Tri-Point Engineering team.

The US race driver and film actor Dempsey will take a break from his usual ride in a Mazda RX-8 in the Grand-Am Rolex series to join the World Challenge series.

“I’m thrilled to be able to race near my Los Angeles home,” said Dempsey

“With the Grand-Am series, I”ve been able to race at many of the great tracks in North America, but now I have a chance to race locally. The Tri-Point MAZDA3 really impressed me during testing. I’ve never driven a front-wheel drive racecar that handled that well before. I shouldn’t have been surprised though as my daily driver is a MAZDASPEED3. The weekend will also be personally rewarding to me as we’ll be carrying the colors of our Dempsey Challenge.”

Dempsey will race in the GTS class, where the touring cars that were eligible in last years series now race.

The Tri-Point Motorsports team’s Mazda3 was built over 2009, and entered only at the last round of 2009, driven by Eric Foss. Patrick Dempsey will be racing against the team’s bitter rivals from previous seasons, RealTime Racing – with their Acura TSX’s, lead by team owner/driver Peter Cunningham, and former BMW driver Nick Esayian – as well as a pair of Pontiac Solstices.

Acura swept the GTS podium in both races at St. Petersburg, but with development on the Mazda continuing, and former World Challenge driver Jason Saini giving the car a warm-up run at the Redline Time Attack event at Buttonwillow, Dempsey should be able to target a podium event at his home track.