David Empringham
David Empringham (born December 28, 1963 in Toronto, Ontario), is a Canadian auto racing driver. David is a two-time Toyota Atlantic, one-time Indy Lights and two-time Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge champion. Most recently, Empringham won the 2012 Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge GS class driver's title with co-driver John Farano.
Empringham began his racing career in 1987, competing in the Spenard/David Formula 2000 series. He then competed regularly in the GM Motorsport series (teammate of Canadian racing legend Richard Spenard) for several years, drove a handful of races in the IMSA Firestone Firehawk series, the Porsche Turbo Cup and Formula Toyota Atlantic.
In 1992, David began competing full-time in the Toyota Atlantic Championship, where he won back-to-back championships in 1993 and 1994. In 1993 David won the Championship with "underdog" CANASKA racing and Canadian Tire sponsorship, based out of Toronto, Ontario. 1994 saw David move to the BDJS racing team, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, taking the Canadian Tire sponsorship with him. 1995 saw David narrowly miss the three-peat, being beat out by Richie Hearn for the title.
1996 saw David make the move to Indy Lights, replacing Greg Moore, who had moved up to the team's CART operation, in the Player's/Forsythe racing Lola. 1996 saw many wins including a thrilling victory in the fastest Indy Lights race ever run on the high banks of Michigan International Speedway during the Inaugural US 500 weekend in May, and ultimately another Championship for "Emp's" mantle. 1997 saw some successes, but no championship.
Despite his success in Atlantics and Indy Lights, amazingly enough Empringham never started a CART race.
In 2001, after several years out of the spotlight, David began competing Part-time in Grand-Am Cup and Grand-Am Motorola series races. During the 2005 season, he managed 2 victories and 8 top-ten finishes on his way to the GS series title with co-driver Scott Maxwell driving for Multimatic Motorsports.
Since then, Dave has competed in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution in Time Attack events for the Sierra Sierra Enterprises (USA) team. Empringham is a two-time runner up at the World Time Attack Challenge in Sydney, Australia (2010, 2011), both times losing out to Tarzan Yamada, who drives for the Japanese Cyber Evo team in a similar Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.
In 2012 Empringham returned to full-time racing in the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge with co-driver John Farano in the #83 BGB Motorsports Porsche Carrera. After a consistent season of points finished (however no wins), Dave and John won the 2012 driver's title. In 2013, Dave returns to Multimatic Motorsports with Farano to compete in the CTSCC series in the #15 Aston Martin Vantage V8 Grand-Am race car.
External links
- David Empringham career summary at DriverDB.com