Patrick Dempsey gets paid millions of dollars to make love to beautiful women on the big screen. This should automatically disqualify him from doing anything else that’s way too much fun. Yet the dashing actor, who’s a Steve McQueen-style car buff, was tapped by Aston Martin to take the wheel in the North American debut of their wicked new Vantage GT4 racer. We ask you, is that fair? Closely based on Aston’s V8 Vantage road car, the GT4 is fitted with a bespoke 4.7-liter V8 engine producing 420 hp.
Dempsey gets to drive the hell out of it in the 2012 Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge (CTSCC) under the Toronto-based Multimatic Motorsports banner. He completed his first run at the Daytona International Speedway where the two GT4s in competition qualified P3 and P24, only managing one timed lap because of yellow flags. We call it lulling the competition – and with the likes of Audi’s new R8 GRAND-AM on the track, it’s pretty fierce – into a false sense of security. And anyone who dismisses Dempsey as a poncey pretty boy is in for a surprise….
