24h Le Mans
His dream came true! The 24 Hours of Le Mans podium had been beckoning Patrick Dempsey for a while and last year he was visibly moved as he stepped up to claim his prize in the LM GTE Am class. The Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche 911 driven by Dempsey and co-drivers Patrick Long and Marco Seefried will be on display at the Geneva Motor Show on 3-13 March.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans will be represented in style at the show in the shape of the Porsche 911. It will be sharing the Tag Heuer stand with a Formula E and Red Bull Racing’s new Formula One car. The watchmaker has recently left McLaren—whose F1 GTR won Le Mans in 1995—for Red Bull Racing.
Dempsey-Proton Racing has moved up from LM GTE Am to LM GTE Pro and will be fielding the only Porsche 911 in this class in the World Endurance Championship this season. Racing was the priority last year in Dempsey’s diary, but this year the tables seemed to have turned and his acting career is taking precedence meaning he cannot race the full WEC season.
The holder of the FIA World Endurance Cup for GT Manufacturers, Porsche is currently focusing on developing a new version of the 911 to comply with the regulations that come into force this year and so will not be fielding a works team in the WEC, apart from the 24 Hours of Le Mans. For THE race of the endurance season, there will be three Porsche factory cars, with last year’s winner Earl Bamber and Nick Tandy already among the named drivers.
Cécile Bonardel / ACO Translated from French by Emma Paulay
PHOTO: LE MANS (SARTHE, FRANCE), CIRCUIT DES 24 HEURES, LE MANS 24 HOURS, SUNDAY 14 JUNE 2015, RACE. On display in Geneva soon: the #77 Porsche 911 run by Dempsey-Proton Racing, which came second in LM GTE Am at Le Mans last year.
