(upbeat music) (engine revving) - And you gotta find the limit, right? In order to learn, you go over the limit and then you pull back. You know, I wanna win.
So you know, I'm going for it. (dramatic upbeat music) (tires screeching) (dramatic upbeat music continues) (tool whirring) (engines revving) (dramatic upbeat music continues) (distant engines revving) - [Announcer] Welcome to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin and the legendary Road America Circuit. It's the Porsche Sprint Challenge, North America.
After qualifying in 11th position this Saturday, Patrick Dempsey is cut through the pack into sixth place. (tense music) (engines revving) - [Dempsey] They're all eyes on you. If you make a mistake, you're the first one that they talk about.
That's what people go to the race for. They wanna see the crashes and stuff. - [Announcer] With some savvy moves, Dempsey now up to the fourth position.
- I'm approaching this with a much more of a sprint mentality, where it's just attack and go. You take a high percentage risk when you do that. (engine revving) (tense music) And life is about making mistakes and learning from them.
That's where wisdom comes from. Not knowledge necessarily. The wisdom comes from the life experience.
I'm definitely gonna win. It's just like I've gotta get some race craft. (tires screeching) (dramatic music) - [Team Member] Gather it back up here.
Gather it back up. Let's go back to work here. (engine revving) (tense music) - [Announcer] Oh no.
Looks like residual damage from the hit in turn one. And he's off in turn three. - [Dempsey] Yeah, I'm done.
I'm done. - [Team Member] PD. PD.
Are you in a safe spot? Are you in a safe spot? - [Dempsey] No, I'm in the (censored).
- [Team Member] Do not move until safety vehicles are on site. - [Track Staff] We are full course yellow for the 98 at turn three. - [Announcer] With Dempsey in third and two laps to go, his chance of the podium finish has unfortunately vanished.
- Definitely really learned a lot today. Well, that, that didn't go to plan. - (indistinct) Drving around.
(Dempsey laughing) - I just need to work on my patience. It's the virtue I do not have at the moment, but I'm working on it. (tense music) - We're trying to go for P2 in class and fifth overall, got a little overzealous with our move into turn one.
We tried to go inside of turn one, overcooked it on the inside line and didn't have the grip to make the corner. Ended up on the outside. Obviously we may have been at fault for something there.
- How bad? - We're gonna get a post race drive through time penalty. We were steaming it in there like we were making that one work.
- If it's an endurance race, I never would've done that. But a sprint race with one or two laps to go I was like, I'm going for it. Basically it's my ego that's bruised.
I've just gotta accept it, own it and move on. So I just gotta stay really focused and then really drive with awareness. Be aggressive, but don't be desperate.
- [Ryan] Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic podcast. Here's an email I got.
It's from someone, she says, "Hey, I'm the manager for the actor, producer, race car driver, Patrick Dempsey. Could I set you guys up to chat? " And I said, "Yeah, of course.
" We stayed in touch, chatting. - That's so cool. - [Ryan] And we've become friends.
- [Dempsey] Yeah, Ryan's really a really insightful guy. I made the pilgrimage to the bookstore. - Hey.
- So it's great to be here to kind of meet Ryan in person. 'cause he's had a big influence on my life with his writings because of his ability to take stoicism and to distill it down into a way that is applicable to your daily life. I know a lot of athletes, I know a lot of businessmen and women who use that philosophy.
So then, and how do you control your emotion? - Yes. - How do you stay calm?
- It's not about emotionlessness, I would say, but it, it is about, I think being less emotional about things that you don't control. - Right? I go through my act model, which is a breakdown of four or five things that I say, that help get me into place.
But it's been, you know, almost 10 years since I started using it. And then I was like, ah, I'm still tight. I'm not breathing properly.
So I gotta remember to start to breathe and just be present. How would the stoics approach something like that? Either going into battle or you're going into competition?
- [Ryan] It's not always this transformative massive advantage, but- - No, it's just little things. It's adjustments. - Yes.
- It's like in the car, every lap the car's different, right? You've got traffic, or you miss the apex, you have to adjust. (dramatic music) - [Announcer] It's a new day and a new race.
Sprint race number two on this beautiful Sunday morning, Patrick Dempsey starts in P11. - [Dempsey] This is a really unforgiving circuit. You have the carousel, and then the kink is where you see most of the mistakes happen.
- [Announcer] Mayhem in the kink. Dempsey quickly capitalizes and moves into fifth place. - And this is what's great when Patrick is coaching me, or he's spotting for me.
He's telling me where to place my attention. - [Patrick] Good job. All clear.
Hit your apex. Focused on good shifts. - [Announcer] Dempsey is now in third position, putting pressure on Michael Clark in the number 17 car.
Dempsey, Krainz and Johnson are nose to tail in a battle for P2. They're rubbing fenders coming through turn three. Dempsey hangs on.
(upbeat music) - [Announcer 2] In the number 98, finishing P2 today, it's Patrick Dempsey. (crowd applauding) - That was not a bad test actually. Still struggle with the same issues that we had in qualifying, but this was a great experience.
There's no grip in the front of the car. So we're just pushing the whole time. And then the race started coming to me, so better than yesterday.
(Dempsey laughing) It bounced back from the day before. I was happy with that result. I mean, we're so close.
You know, I can win. It's just a matter of time. I kept my belief in myself strong.
- He did an amazing job. The car wasn't quite aligned the way we wanted. He was struggling a little bit with performance, and he had to battle through that sort of mid race slump.
I'm glad that he kept with it and brought it home on the podium. - You know, everybody has nerves. I mean, I was listening to something about Messi and Ronaldo.
They all have their technique on how they get over their anxiety. The more successful you get, the more visible you get, the more nervous you get, because the expectation level and the pressure is that much higher. (engines revving) - [Announcer] It's a full field for the rolling start of the Porsche Endurance Challenge, North America.
- [Team Member] Ready, green, green, green, green, green. - [Announcer] Green flag drops and they're off. (dramatic music) Here come the Cayman GT4s across the line.
(tires screeching) Chaos at the start. A big collision on the front straight. Six cars involved as they come to the green flag.
- [Team Member] Whoa, go left, go left, go left, go left. (engine revving) (tense music) - [Dempsey] It is being in touch with your emotion, but not letting it control you. (engine revving) - [Announcer] A huge hit.
Let's hope that everybody's okay after that one. Lots of pieces strewn across the racetrack. (tense music continues) - It's like a bull behind the gates.
And then the gates open, it's green flag, and they just got overzealous and tangled up. And once there's contact, it's a chain reaction and there's really nowhere to go. So, I was shocked that we even made it through.
Not unscathed, but that we didn't get totally collected. And have a DNF right there. - [Team Member] Check your tire pressures on your way around.
Check your tire pressures. Make sure your tires are still up, we didn't get any debris. - [Dempsey] Tires feel good.
I don't feel any vibration. Hard to know if we got any of the carbon fiber or not. - You've got like four cars wrecked on the front straight-away here, bud.
So just stay clean, stay clean. Yeah, we are up from P12 to P6 automatically on that start. We have to execute the tire stop first, right?
Then we're gonna look at the damage. We have to take a piece of Bear Bond and try to pull the bumper and fender up a little bit. So we need to put a piece on the right front and get it across the light.
Okay? While I'm doing the driver change, we can only have you two guys working on the car at once. (tools whirring) - Yeah, you know, it's just really, really slow start.
You know, I was ready, ready, ready, ready. And then I started to give a little bit of a gap, just so I could get a run on 'em. And then it just looked like someone had hit the wall.
And then I was trying to avoid cars to my left. And then tires bouncing over. - [Announcer] Time to go back racing as the red flag ends.
Patrick Long is now behind the wheel with 30 minutes remaining in P6. - What's our deficit? - Three seconds.
- Yeah, but everybody else is running fifteens. - [Bobby] The fast guys, 14. 9 was the quick so far.
(tense music) (engines revving) (indistinct radio chattering) (engine revving) (tense music continues) - Something's wrong somewhere. (engine revving) Second and a half a lap ain't gonna get it done. (team member indistinct chattering) - Well now, yeah, with the damage.
. . - [Dempsey] High speed under steer.
- [Bobby] Coming to the checker point, coming to the checker. - [Announcer] And with a battle weary car, Patrick Long crosses the finish line in P5. - Good battle out there, under the circumstances.
We'll go to work on this thing. Yeah, I dunno if it was the damage from the incident in the race or the previous damage, but we were off the pace a bit today. All in all, you know, you win your championships on your bad days, so we'll take a fifth and move on to Sonoma.
- There's a great saying that I heard, it's like, "What is yours cannot be taken away, what isn't, cannot be held. " And I use that as a mantra sometimes just to allow myself to go, you know what? It wasn't meant for me to be on the podium today.
Maybe it's important for someone else to be there. What did I gain out of this that is gonna allow me to grow and to improve as a person and as a driver? So if you can look at yourself in the mirror and go, did you do the best you could?
Are you being honest with yourself? - Our backs were against the wall the entirety of the second half of the weekend. You can allow yourself to really go down that black hole of, oh, nothing's going right, this isn't our weekend, everything's bad luck, et cetera.
But Patrick has a character that's. . .
He's very thick-skinned. He has a lot of confidence in the big picture. And it's my job to sometimes tip the scales and just reassure him that he's in the right mindset.
There were smiles and hugs after that second sprint race. And that was our peak. We got through another weekend.
Lots learned and plenty to process and work on as we head into Sonoma. (upbeat music) - Come on now. Nice and clean here.
All right, let's drop him and send him. (engine revving) We're on his bumper. Come on PD.
Set him up. Can we not get impatient here, is the key? Good job, clear by four.
Tighten that gap.
