Dempsey “Loving” Unexpected Sports Car Opportunity

Peter Dempsey is relishing his surprise return to top-flight motorsport in the FIA World Endurance Championship this season, describing his pace on his sports car bow as “way better than I expected.”

Dempsey was a single-seater star, achieving plenty of success in Formula Ford 1600 competition, and finishing runner-up in Star Mazda in 2009, before progressing to Indy Lights and finishing fifth in the 2013 standings.

But he was unable to rise any further up the ladder and instead set up his own Turn 3 Motorsport team having stopped competing himself.

However, a chance conversation with TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R driver Charlie Eastwood at Daytona last year set the wheels in motion for Dempsey to make a return to professional racing for the first time in 13 years with the TF squad in the WEC.

“Charlie had followed my own racing career and said, ‘Hey, are you Silver or Bronze?'” Dempsey told Sportscar365.

“I said, ‘I’m Silver but I haven’t raced for 13 years and I turn 40 in March 2026.’ He said, ‘If you get downgraded, maybe there’s an opportunity to do something with us.’

“I’d given up any expectation that anything would ever happen so I thought I’ll do it for a laugh more. If it happens, great — if it doesn’t, it’s not going to change my life in any way.

“When I got downgraded because I hadn’t been in a race car for so long, we started testing right away and getting up to speed and learning all the processes of what goes into GT and sports car racing because it’s all new to me.”

Dempsey said he’s “loving” that learning process and enjoyed an impressive debut at Imola last month where he set the pace among the FIA Bronze-rated drivers in first LMGT3 qualifying, topping the session by 0.673 seconds.

However, it was a frustrating race for the No. 34 Corvette as the crew battled electrical problems, but Dempsey was still happy with his own performance.

“Midway through the second stint, we had an issue with the car and I was fighting that,” he said. “Loss of power, different modes and had no dash and no lap times.

“It was a huge learning experience because I had to deal with a lot in my two-and-a-half stints, so thankful for that but obviously disappointing not to get any result.

“Quali pace was good, it was way better than I expected as it was my first quali sim all weekend. Now we’ve got to sustain the pace, that’s what I’ve got to work on.”

The No. 34 machine he shared with Eastwood and Salih Yoluc ultimately was not a classified finisher, while Dempsey was encouraged by the pace of the sister car that narrowly missed out on the class victory.

Dempsey admitted it took a lot of work during the winter for him to feel comfortable at the wheel of the Corvette, which was a very different challenge compared to the single-seater machinery he was used to.

“Coming from open-wheel, my whole life with downforce to then have so many driving aids to deal with has been the hardest thing,” he said.

“In an open-wheel car, you can manipulate the brakes and change your driving style to make the car balance a lot different.

“Here, if you brake too late, you’re into the ABS too much. If you’re too aggressive with the wheel, you’re into the traction control too much.

“So you’re handcuffed a little bit with how to get speed out of the car, so that’s been the hardest thing for me to adapt to and manipulate both sides of that.

“It’s just a huge learning curve. I’ve always been open to learning but, at 40 years old, to learn a whole different side to motorsport is a lot to take in.”

Dempsey has also worked on his own fitness during the winter, adding: “I was 20 kilos heavier a year ago and started training again.

“It’s been great for me mental health-wise and it’s great for drivers in my own team to see their team owner racing again. There’s so many little things it’s helped with.”

He had been expecting to make his WEC debut in Qatar at the end of March, but the scheduled season opener was postponed until October amid the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

Dempsey said this unexpected delay before experiencing his first race weekend actually added to his nerves before the Imola event.

“It probably made me more anxious because I had done a decent amount of testing before February and I had already tested in Qatar,” he explained.

“I had kind of ramped my whole mentality to go to Qatar for round one and then it got delayed and that gave me more time to think about it, and then overthink it.

“We got to fit in a day at Spa and then the Prologue was moved to Imola. If we had started at Qatar, then I would be rocking up to Spa for the race weekend never having been there so, performance-wise, it definitely helped us as a team.”