![\"\"](\"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Team-GDT-450x275.jpg\" "\\"Team")
BALTIMORE, Sept. 3 \u2014 Rounds 13 and 14 of the 2012 Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear on Saturday and Sunday were challenging for a number of reasons, and Team GDT left the Grand Prix of Baltimore presented by SRT with mixed results.<\/p>\n
Ryan Tveter of Oyster Bay, N.Y. posted the best finish for the Dallas-based team this weekend when he turned an 18th-place starting spot into a tenth-place finish in Saturday\u2019s race on the temporary street course at Baltimore\u2019s Inner Harbor.<\/p>\n
Both Tveter and his teammate, Andres M\u00e9ndez, also had 12th-place finishes here, as M\u00e9ndez finished 12th on Saturday and Tveter placed 12th on Sunday.<\/p>\n
M\u00e9ndez, of Bogot\u00e1, Colombia, only completed one lap of Sunday\u2019s race bcfore he was hit in the rear by another competitor in the chicane and was launched into the wall. He ended up 18th in the final rundown for that race.<\/p>\n
The whole weekend was complicated.<\/p>\n
Track time was at a premium here before a car turned a single lap due to a crammed schedule. After several cars got airborne going over some light rail tracks on the course, the event organizers ordered some work done to the track surface and they eventually added a chicane to slow the cars down before they went over the railroad tracks. All of this trouble affected the Star Mazda action, and most of the drivers only got a handful of laps in during Friday morning\u2019s practice session before it was red flagged.\u00a0 Friday afternoon\u2019s qualifying session didn\u2019t go well either, so it was turned into another practice session and the starting line-up for Saturday\u2019s race was determined by the current point standings. That put M\u00e9ndez\u2019s No. 53 sponsored by DataFile Internacional S.A. and Grupo Kriterion 12th on the grid. Tveter\u2019s No. 33, sponsored by new partner CIMIER Swiss Watches and Motorola Mobility LLC, had the 18th starting spot.<\/p>\n
Set-ups were just educated guesses due to the lack of practice time, and some drivers, like M\u00e9ndez, were still learning the course when the green lights went on for the standing start.<\/p>\n
Even that was complicated, however, as there was a problem with the system that triggers the lights and the last set of lights came on 1 second before the other ones did. Tveter and two other drivers closest to those lights took off when they saw them go green, and were later issued drive-through penalties for jumping the start that they didn\u2019t deserve. Although the series\u2019 officials apologized afterwards, there was no way to rectify the situation for the drivers involved.<\/p>\n
The event\u2019s first full-course caution came out before even a lap was in the books. M\u00e9ndez was up to tenth at that point and Tveter was 13th.<\/p>\n
M\u00e9ndez tried to brake a little late going into Turn 3 on the restart but had a problem and slipped back to 15th shortly thereafter. Tveter stayed in 13th place until Gustavo Menezes passed him working lap five to push him to 14th.\u00a0 The two Team GDT rookies switched positions working lap 7 when Tveter served his unwarranted penalty, right before another full-course yellow came out on lap 8.<\/p>\n
There were about 7 minutes left in the 30-minute race when the green waved again on lap 11 with M\u00e9ndez in 12th place and Tveter 14th.\u00a0 M\u00e9ndez stayed in 12th place until the checkered came out on lap 13.\u00a0 Tveter moved up from 14th to 11th when the driver who was second, Sage Karam, crashed working lap 12; Carlos Linares crashed and Tveter passed M\u00e9ndez. He took the checkered flag in 11th position but he advanced to tenth in the official order of finish after another driver was penalized for using a runoff area illegally.<\/p>\n
Jack Hawksworth ended up winning Saturday\u2019s race over Connor De Phillippi and Gabby Chaves.<\/p>\n
The starting line-up for Sunday\u2019s 40-minute race was established by each driver\u2019s fastest lap during Saturday\u2019s race, which put Tveter in 13th and M\u00e9ndez in 16th in that starting line-up.\u00a0 Not wanting a repeat of the problem with the starting lights or the gearbox problems suffered by two cars during Saturday\u2019s standing start, the officials ruled that Sunday\u2019s race would begin with a rolling start instead.<\/p>\n
The start of Sunday\u2019s race went well for both of Team GDT\u2019s drivers initially, but then things turned problematic. M\u00e9ndez got a great start and passed several cars on the first lap, vaulting from 16th to 13th on the first lap.\u00a0 Unfortunately that was the only lap he finished on Sunday, because he was forced to retire after another driver hit him in the rear and propelled him into a wall working lap two.\u00a0 Luckily M\u00e9ndez wasn\u2019t hurt, but his car suffered extensive damage.<\/p>\n
Before all that happened, Tveter was having his own issues.\u00a0 A driver ahead of him hit his brakes going into Turn 1 earlier than Tveter expected, and Tveter hit him in the rear. Tveter\u2019s car got airborne for an instant but the real problem was the damage to its front wing.\u00a0 He was forced to pit for a replacement, which dropped him back to 18th place, one lap down.<\/p>\n
He got 17th when M\u00e9ndez retired. He got 16th when he passed Walt Bowlin working lap 11. He got 15th on lap 15 after Martin Scuncio ran into problems.
\nHe got two more positions on lap 17 when Zack Meyer and Menezes dropped back.\u00a0 He advanced to 12th on lap 23 when Camilo Schmidt dropped back a few spots, and he finished in that position when the checkered waved on lap 25.<\/p>\n
Karam led every lap to win Sunday\u2019s race, with Hawksworth second and De Phillippi third.<\/p>\n
The Star Mazda set now heads for the West Coast for another doubleheader next weekend at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Salinas, Calif. Sept. 8-9.<\/p>\n
The Baltimore Star Mazda races will be broadcast on the Mazda Motorsports Hour on the Velocity network at noon on Saturday, Sept. 29.<\/p>\n
Fans can learn more about Team GDT on its Facebook page or through Twitter @TeamGDT.<\/p>\n
Both M\u00e9ndez and Tveter also have Facebook and Twitter accounts. M\u00e9ndez\u2019s Website is at agM\u00e9ndez.com and Tveter\u2019s is at RyanTveter.com. The series\u2019 Website is at StarMazda.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BALTIMORE, Sept. 3 \u2014 Rounds 13 and 14 of the 2012 Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear on Saturday and Sunday were challenging for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"publish_to_discourse":"","publish_post_category":"","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-front-page-news","category-race-results"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13561"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13565,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13561\/revisions\/13565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}