Dempsey races from TV doctor to road warrior

By Ned Martel

updated 1:59 p.m. ET June 4, 2008

The place where Patrick Dempsey goes to be Patrick Dempsey is far away from the "Grey's Anatomy" soundstage and nowhere near the publicity-junket hotel suites where he's required to hawk the so-so chick-flick "Made of Honor." In fact, it's across the country from the house in Bel Air where his wife and three little kids are blithely enjoying their weekend.

On this particular weekend in March, Dempsey finds himself in the sun-streaked flats between Miami and the Keys at Homestead Miami Speedway, among fellow travelers who have ascended to gearhead heaven. As the weekend of racing begins, pit crews disembowel and relubricate engine blocks.

Over the high-decibel rush of firing pistons and tires on asphalt, Dempsey tries to explain why he's learned to drive among the horsepower hopefuls in his Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series league. "It's really about relaxation, but it's about being aggressive too!" he yells before strapping himself into car No. 40 — his six-speed, three-rotor engine Mazda RX-8 — and peeling into the path of Porsches, Pontiacs and Daytona prototypes. A lone F-16 pilot from the nearby Air Force base surveys the action in silent loops. Watching the 42-year-old embody a boy's dream of having his Hot Wheels setup turn into actual-size reality, one thing becomes clear: Patrick Dempsey is a man trapped inside a woman's soap opera.

In these practice laps, he alternates driving duty with Joe Foster, a Georgia-based father of two who's the team's lead driver and motormouth engineer. When Dempsey drives, Foster pipes instructions — as well as here-comes-trouble reports from another driver stationed atop the grandstand — into his earpiece. The course is serpentine, with hairpin turns that slow cars down to 50 mph and straightaways allowing sprints of 170. "Big guy's commin' ay-out," drawls one of the pit-crew dudes as Dempsey pulls up to the team canopy. Practice round completed, he climbs out of the driver's seat, distributes back pats, and asks for his times. A Toughbook on a folding table shows him to be in the lower middle of the pack, with each of his 13 laps clocking in at just under 90 seconds. Vaguely satisfied, he busts out of the pit for a golf-cart journey through the crowd mingling among the mechanics' stations.

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When the cart stops at Dempsey's team trailer, a swarm of women await him. They say the predictable things, but it's the smattering of men who, again and again, offer a surprising pronouncement: "My wife loves you." It's a conversation starter and ender all at once, and so Dempsey gamely smiles for their cell-phone cameras, speaks even faster than his normal clip and excuses himself. He doesn't exhale until he's all the way back to the little room in the trailer, a few steps up and past cabinets labeled "earplugs" and "stopwatches." This is his locker-room sanctuary, sleek and industrially upholstered, with handy wands on which helmets and gloves are drying.

Getting up to speed
Dempsey asks Foster for specifics and they replay footage shot inside the car. The temperature routinely climbs to 150 degrees in the driver's seat, and as Dempsey strips off his quilted race suit — it contains built-in tubing through which ice water flows — Foster talks telemetry and tire pressure. Then the two discuss adjustments to a hard foam pad, which keeps a driver from sliding down during the g-turns. Dempsey needs his footwork on the clutch and brake and accelerator to become instinctual and effortless so he can focus on the track and the other drivers.

There are metrics that show how firmly he braked through a turn and whether his downshifting was smooth and where the traction got skiddy. Dempsey savors every nuance. The differences between his and Foster's performances are only a second or two, but the kid from Maine who wanted to be an Olympic slalom skier knows that fractions of seconds separate champions from also-rans. "I need to improve my braking into six," he says, talking about a dogleg bend where it's easy to tear up the shoulder turf. "I need to go deeper there. That's where I had a lockup on the front right. That's where everybody's catching up."

It's taking him a while to literally get up to speed. This is only his third race in the Mazda, and in the three years he and Foster have been in business — and this is more enterprise than hobby — he's worked hard to earn the respect of teammates and competitors alike. Foster is clearly grateful for the attention that follows his partner: Dempsey's involvement makes it far easier to attract sponsors like Serengeti eyeglasses, Specialized bikes and Jean Richard watches (though the logo of the last, emblazoned on Dempsey's helmet, unfortunately calls to mind the Ricky Bobby nemesis Jean Girard). Foster is especially pleased that Dempsey wants hard feedback, not room to sulk or sessions of ego repair. "It's like a director giving you a note after each take," Dempsey says. "I love an adjustment. It gives me something to focus on."

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