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.
