America’s Tveter Finishes Ninth For Formula Renault 2.0 NEC Season And Helps Propel Josef Kaufman Ra

NÜRBURG, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, Sept. 24 — Ryan Tveter of Oyster Bay, N.Y. finished ninth in the drivers’ championship for 2014 in the Formula Renault 2.0 Northern European Cup with his Game Ready Injury Treatment System #16. The 20-year-old driver, who is completing only his second full season of racing, had a highest finish of second at Assen, The Netherlands in August and contributed to Josef Kaufman Racing winning the 2014 team championship.

Tveter finished just two points away from the eighth-place finisher, Jake Hughes of Birmingham, England, 152 to 150. The NEC series concluded Sunday at the Nürburgring, the famous 5.158-kilometer (3.199-mile), 16-turn road course that hosts the German Grand Prix.

Two of the three 25-minute NEC races scheduled for the Nürburgring over the weekend were completed. On Friday afternoon Tveter finished 15th in a race that had been postponed from the card at Most, Czech Republic in August. On Saturday morning he placed 13th in the first half of the Nürburgring doubleheader. The second half of the doubleheader was canceled on Sunday morning due to heavy fog.

Tveter was hampered by a lack of practice time at Nürburgring with his #16, which is also sponsored by Switzerland’s Autobau conference center and racing museum. Due to a technicality, he was not able to participate in a practice session on Friday, so time to fine-tune the car’s set-up and get acclimated to the track before qualifying was very limited. However, he was still able to post the tenth-fastest time in the first qualifying session on Friday with a 1:57.780, and he was ninth in the second qualifying session later that day with a time of 1:57.039. He was only 0.4 off the pole and 0.2 off P3 in qualifying; the top 10 drivers were extremely close.

Tveter started 11th Friday in the race postponed from Most. It was held on a dry track, but his car was pushed into another car during the event and knocked back a few spots. He took the checkered flag in 16th position on lap 13, 1 second behind the 15th-place driver, Martin Kodric, and 4.5 seconds ahead of the 17th-place driver, Callan O’Keeffe. However, Tveter actually finished 15th in that race when another driver received a post-race penalty.

Tveter started tenth on Saturday. Two cars behind him made contact at the start, but Tveter had a clean start. Unfortunately he was pushed very wide on lap two, and he dropped to 14th rather than crash. He moved up to 13th position working lap seven when the driver directly in front of him, Stefan Riener, pitted, and he took the checkered flag in that position. He was 2.7 seconds behind the 12th place driver, Ukyo Sasahara, and 0.629 of a second ahead of the 14th place driver, Raoul Owens.

Tveter was scheduled to start ninth on Sunday morning in the race that was canceled.

“To finish in the top 10 in this series in only my second full year of racing is good,” Tveter said. “I was ninth for the year, only two points behind eighth.

“This is the first time I was involved in a team championship too, so that’s also good.

“The weekend was a bit touch-and-go,” he added. “I wasn’t allowed to drive in the Friday morning session before qualifying, which was a shame. It’s always a handicap to miss a session. Still, we were only four-tenths off third. From first to tenth was really close.

“In the race that was postponed from Most I got a good start, but then I got hit in the third corner and put into O’Keeffe. Surprisingly there wasn’t too much damage to the car. My lap times were very similar to my teammates’ times.

“I got a good start in Saturday’s race too,” he related. “I was fighting with O’Keeffe, and in the Turn 4 right-hander he closed the door on me, I got launched over a curb and the train went by.

“I was really looking forward to the third race on Sunday,” he added. “It was dry but cloudy on Friday and Saturday, and it was a shame the fog was too thick to race on Sunday morning. Jake Hughes got two points ahead of me in the standings, but to finish in P9 and to help win the team championship is still gratifying. This series is very competitive, so to be in the top 10 is good.”

Tveter was born just 10 days before Hughes, but Hughes began his racing career in karts some five years ago and has much more racing experience than Tveter. Hughes was the 2013 British Racing Drivers Club Formula 4 champion.

Although the Formula Renault 2.0 NEC series has concluded its season, Tveter has two more events in the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup series this year. He races in that series this coming weekend, Sept. 26-28, at Paul Ricard, France. The Eurocup season finale is Oct. 17-19 at Jerez, Spain.

For more information on Tveter, who is currently on a leave of absence from his engineering studies at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., see his website at RyanTveter.com. He is also on Facebook at Facebook.com/RyanTveter and he’s @RyanTveter on Twitter. He sometimes conducts contests for fans that follow him on Twitter, and he posts on-board video on his YouTube channel too.

For more information on the team, see jk-racing.de.

For NEC Web site is at necup.com and the Eurocup series’ Web site is at WorldSeriesByRenault.fr.