BALTIMORE, Sept. 3 — Ryan Tveter, a rookie in the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear, strives for a top-10 finish or better in each of his races. Despite a host of challenges he accomplished that benchmark on Saturday in the first half of a doubleheader at the Grand Prix of Baltimore presented by SRT, and he was only two positions off that goal in the second half of the doubleheader on Sunday with a 12th-place finish.

Tveter, of Oyster Bay, N.Y., had one of the nicest-looking cars in the paddock with CIMIER Swiss Watches joining another one of his partners, Motorola Mobility LLC, for the livery on his Team GDT No. 33.

The already-crammed weekend schedule — and several race cars — took a beating when some light rail tracks caused problems on the temporary street circuit in practice.  Grinding the pavement’s surface was attempted and then a chicane was added to slow the cars down before they approached the tracks, but the Star Mazda practice session on Friday resulted in very little actual laps run. Friday’s qualifying session was turned into an additional practice session due to the problems too. 

The grid for Saturday’s 30-minute race was established by the current point standings, which put Tveter 18th since he is not competing in all 17 races this year. The lost time also meant that set-ups were more of an educated guess rather than one based on the usual data collection, interpretation and collaboration.

Saturday’s 30-minute race began with the series’ standard standing start, but there was a problem with the circuit’s lights that directly affected Tveter’s race.  The light closest to him turned green 1 second before the others did, and Tveter and two other drivers blasted off a split second before the rest of the field. The series officials did not initially realize there was a problem with the lights, and they issued an unwarranted drive-through penalty to Tveter for jumping the start.  They apologized later and took steps to make sure the same problem didn’t occur on Sunday, but there was no way for Tveter to make up the time lost.

Tveter had gotten as high as 13th place before he served the penalty, which dropped him to 16th position. He advanced to 14th place on lap eight when Camilo Schmidt dropped out and he passed Walt Bowlin, and he got three more positions at the end of the race when Carlos Linares and Sage Karam crashed in separate accidents and Tveter passed his teammate, Andres Méndez. He advanced from 11th to tenth after the race when a driver who had placed ahead of him was disqualified for using a run-off area illegally.

Considering the bizarre start, Tveter was pleased to have improved his 18th starting spot by 10 positions for another top-10 finish.

“The car was not where we wanted it to be on Saturday because we didn’t have enough time to work on our set-up,” he said.  “We didn’t know which direction to go with the changes; we were kind of going into the race without any knowledge of how the car would handle. Then after the drive-through penalty, I just used the rest of the race as a learning experience.”

The starting grid for Sunday’s 40-minute race was established by each driver’s fastest lap in Saturday’s race, which put Tveter 13th.  The officials changed the procedure to a rolling start instead of a standing start in order to avoid the problem with the lights that occurred in Saturday’s race.

Things went well for Tveter with the start on Sunday until he got to Turn 1.

“I was behind Stefan Rzadzinski and I was looking for a way past him,” he said.  “Going into the braking zone he hit the brakes a little early and caught me off guard, and I hit the back of his car going about 120 miles per hour.  My car got airborne for a little bit.  It really wasn’t damaged too much but I lost half of the main plate of the front wing.  The other half fell off eventually too and the car was too hard to handle at that point, so I came in to change the front wing.”

Team GDT’s crew changed the car’s nose very quickly but Tveter still lost a lap due to the pit stop.

Another challenge during that race occurred when a car ahead of him lost an excessive amount of oil, which covered Tveter’s car, helmet and visor.

“Other people had some problems later and I moved up,” he said.  “On one lap three people crashed. I ended up 12th, but we would have finished higher if I hadn’t had that incident in Turn 1.  We definitely had the car handling much better.  I was able to run good lap times. I really want to thank Team GDT for their hard work; my sponsors, CIMIER Swiss Watches and Motorola Mobility; and Mazda and Goodyear for sponsoring the series.”

On Thursday Tveter participated in the STEM program, which encourages school children to study science, technology, engineering and math. Over 100 children from Baltimore schools visited the Star Mazda paddock to learn how those subjects are used in open-wheel racing.

“It was really nice; it was great to talk to the kids about racing, and hopefully we encouraged them to focus on their studies,” Tveter said.

In addition to his work in racing, Tveter, 18, is a freshman at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.

The Baltimore Star Mazda races will be shown on the Velocity network at noon Saturday, Sept. 29.

Now Tveter heads to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Salinas, Calif. for another doubleheader this coming weekend.  He has never been to that track before, but he’s looking forward to learning as much as possible and to experience its famous Corkscrew first hand.

For more information on Tveter, see his Website at RyanTveter.com and his videos on YouTube. Fans can also interact with him through Facebook and Twitter.  The Star Mazda series’ Website is at StarMazda.com. For more information on CIMIER, see its Website at Cimier.com.

About CIMIER Swiss Watches
CIMIER is a Swiss watch brand that has been combining tradition, innovation and quality since 1924. Solid functionality and timeless design reflect the elegance of CIMIER’s watches. In addition to its popular quartz watches, CIMIER also offers a wide range of mechanical models. All CIMIER watches have an attractive price–performance ratio. Customers who would like a unique watch can tailor their own CIMIER model under expert guidance at the CIMIER Watch Academy in Baar, Switzerland. CIMIER’s ambassadors include various renowned personalities such as Massimo Busacca, Tanja Frieden, Seven, Sarah Meier, Caroline Rominger and Edoardo Molinari.