![\"\"](\"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/TeamGDTLogo.jpg\" "\\"TeamGDTLogo\\"")
DALLAS, Oct. 14 \u2014 Two young drivers from Colombia \u2014 Andres M\u00e9ndez and Juan Camilo Acosta \u2014 will represent Team GDT in the season finale for the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear this coming Friday, Oct. 19, at Road Atlanta in Braselton, Ga.<\/p>\n
Mendez, 18, of Bogot\u00e1, Colombia, will be concluding his rookie season in Star Mazda with his Team GDT No. 53, which is sponsored by DataFile Internacional S.A. and Grupo Kriterion.\u00a0 He will try to surpass his best finish in the series to date, which is currently a sixth at Trois-Rivi\u00e9res, Quebec in August.<\/p>\n
Acosta, 22, of Cali, Columbia, will be making his first Star Mazda start ever after testing with the team on the road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Oct. 10-11. He set the team\u2019s fastest lap of that test and he was fourth and fifth overall in the two practice sessions held during his first day ever driving a Star Mazda car.<\/p>\n
Acosta is sponsored by two young women\u2019s clothing lines: Studio F and Ela. He has only competed in one event in the Panam GP Series so far this year, but he won the second half of that doubleheader Sept. 23 at Aut\u00f3dromo Tocancip\u00e1, Colombia.\u00a0 He qualified fourth and finished fourth in the first half of that doubleheader.<\/p>\n
Although M\u00e9ndez and Acosta are both from Colombia, M\u00e9ndez said he doesn\u2019t think they have raced against each other in the past.\u00a0 \u201cMaybe once, but I don\u2019t think so,\u201d M\u00e9ndez said.\u00a0 \u201cHe is a little older than I am, and we weren\u2019t in the same classes in karting.\u00a0 When he was in seniors, I was in juniors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now M\u00e9ndez and Acosta face the same task: finding the fastest way around Road Atlanta, a track they\u2019ll both see for the first time this week. The Star Mazda season finale is part of the card at one of the biggest American Le Mans Series races of the year, the Petit Le Mans.<\/p>\n
M\u00e9ndez and Acosta\u2019s first opportunity to turn a lap on the 2.54-mile (4.088 km), 12-turn road course will come during Tuesday\u2019s test day, with sessions at 10 a.m. and 2:50 p.m.<\/p>\n
There are two 30-minute official practice sessions on Wednesday at 10:15 a.m. and 4:15 p.m.<\/p>\n
Thursday is devoted to qualifying for the Star Mazda set, with the action getting underway at 12:15 p.m.\u00a0 They\u2019ll all be aiming to break Peter Dempsey\u2019s track record of 1:18.328.<\/p>\n
The 50-minute season finale will begin with a standing start at 3:45 p.m. Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Team GDT\u2019s lead engineer, Eric Purcell, won this race \u2014 and the series championship \u2014 with John Edwards in 2008.<\/p>\n
For more information on Team GDT, see its Facebook page and the series\u2019 website at StarMazda.com. Live timing and scoring is slated for the series\u2019 website and the Race Monitor app.<\/p>\n
The Road Atlanta Star Mazda race will be broadcast in the United States on the Discovery network\u2019s Velocity channel on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, Nov. 24, at noon Eastern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DALLAS, Oct. 14 \u2014 Two young drivers from Colombia \u2014 Andres M\u00e9ndez and Juan Camilo Acosta \u2014 will represent Team GDT in the season finale […]<\/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":[22,3,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-front-page-news","category-racing-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14503","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=14503"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14508,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14503\/revisions\/14508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}