Dempsey Del Piero Racing qualifies 4th at Canada

BOWMANVILLE, Ontario, Canada (July 20, 2013) – The No. 27 Dempsey Del Piero Racing Tully’s Coffee Porsche 911 GT3 Cup will start on the outside of row two for the second consecutive race after Andy Lally qualified fourth in the GTC class Saturday for tomorrow’s Mobil 1 Sports Car Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park.

Lally turned his top time of 1:21.930 (108.048 mph) on his ninth flying lap of the 15 minute session and came up just a few thousandths of a second shy of Spencer Pumpelly’s third fastest lap time of 1:21.924 (108.056 mph).

“I think we actually had the setup but I asked our engineer Lars Giersing for a change that I probably shouldn’t have,” Lally said. “I probably should have left it as free as we had it. We just took a gamble that it was going to get greasy and loose and it just backfired on us. We were just too tight.”

While Lally has been racing since 1995 at Mosport – the former name for more than 50 years of what is now known as Canadian Tire Motorsports Park – Dempsey is making his first start at Ontario, Canada’s premier permanent road course.

#27 Dempsey Del Piero Racing Porsche 911 GT3 Cup: Patrick Dempsey, Andy Lally

Photo by: Michael Tan

Dempsey ran a limited number of laps in unofficial Friday testing at Mosport but got his first real runs on the 10-turn, 2.459-mile road course in Saturday’s pair of practice sessions.

“Today was really good, I got a lot of laps in, close to like 60-plus, so that is really good,” Dempsey said. “For my first time here, my pace is pretty good. There are a few places I need to work on but, overall, not bad. It seems to be going really, really well and I am looking forward to starting the race.”

A heavy rain storm that hit the Mosport late in Friday’s test session brought with it temperatures nearly 20 degrees cooler on Saturday. The hot and slick track that Lally and the team were looking for in qualifying never materialized.

“I had to wait to go to power in Turns 1, 2 and 4 a lot and that probably cost us a front row,” Lally said. “I don’t think we had a shot at the pole but we had a chance for P2. We are guessing we can get back to where we were right now. We have a few things to look at on the data to make some comparisons but we really should have left it alone for qualifying.”

Dempsey Del Piero Racing