As an aside, that 'Dempsey at Lemans' series was amazingly good if you can find it. I caught it on late night cable 2 months back and was instantly hooked.

I'm afraid that many of those of us interested in car racing know well that Paul Newman is a serious racer, and has been for decades. He's a big deal in the racing community....almost Steve McQueen level.
What was a surprise to me was Patrick Dempsey going to Lemans in 2013, I had no idea he was a serious racer....

http://videosift.com/video/Patrick-Dempsey-Racing-Lemans-Mint-400

True enough. I think we've all been there, being stupid because we panicked.
I wasn't judging anything but the driving skill there, a skill that was found to be lacking in this one instance. ;-)

I just remember thinking, back when there was the sticking throttle on Toyota's (I think), "Why don't they just take it out of gear or turn it off?". I realized that turning it off might lock the steering, but changing gears should work. One day when driving my 79 Lemans (my first car) my brakes failed completely, I threw the car into park and got it stopped safely, so it can work at least sometimes.

Well... no, not really

But this one is road legal:

(although if you read the linked autoweek article, [spoiler]it's not EXACTLY a LeMans car, more of a very clever and authentic replica[/spoiler] (come back after watching the vid for the spoiler )).