Dempsey Wins at Road America

Added: 9th August 2008

Irishman Peter Dempsey won his first Star Mazda race in Road America, Wisconsin on Saturday 9th August 2008.

Dempsey who had been setting the pace in all pre-season testing has had a very difficult first half of the season but the Motorsport Ireland young driver of the year runner up never gave up and has now been rewarded with an overdue win in his LotusWorks / Quayside / Center Jewellers / Trojan.ie sponsored car.

Only two weeks ago in Portland, Dempsey was devastated when leading the race for 23 laps to have a fuel problem which denied him of both his first win and the lead of the championship. The next day in race two Peter made a driver error when trying to make up places to get to the front. Things looked really bad at this point as he did not have sponsorship in place for the next round but he stayed on with the team and convinced the team owner to let him race at Road America. If things were not bad enough, he had an engine problem in testing at Road America leaving him off the pace and he missed the last test session before qualifying while the team scrambled to fit a new engine.

Peter said “ I am going to go out in qualifying but if I am still off the pace I won’t do the race, there is not much left to go wrong at this stage, I think everything you can have go wrong has gone wrong.”

Dempsey was rewarded for his determination when he appeared on pole position for most of qualifying and he finished up second quickest loosing out by .2 to American hopeful John Edwards.

“ I am delighted said Peter, I really have to thank the team Andersen Racing, it was a real scramble to get the engine fitted on time and then in qualifying I had no radio and no dash, so to end up second quickest is brilliant, I really think I could have got the pole.”

Dempsey was now back to his confident self, since fitting the new engine he seemed to have the pace and while he was nervous going into the race, he felt this was his chance to get that elusive win! At the start Peter settled into second place behind American John Edwards and when an opportunity arose he took the lead, this time he had the speed to pull out a 2.5 second lead. Another yellow flag at the end of the race bunched them all up again and on the restart Peter ran a little wide letting Edwards past but with a daring move Peter took the lead with two laps to go and went on to win his first race in the American Star Mazda series.

A delighted Peter said “It has been really difficult with all the things that have gone wrong this season but I am absolutely delighted with this win, I have to thank Dan Andersen and his team for giving me this chance to race this weekend. I also have to thank LotusWorks who helped me at Portland, also my Manager Anthony Murray of Quayside who without his help I would not have even got past the first race, I only wish he was here to celebrate. I am happy now I have won a race as it was looking like I was never going to win one.”

The next round of the Star Mazda Championship will be on Aug 17th at Trois-Rivieres in Quebec, Canada.

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