Another reason to call Forsythe Championship Racing the classiest organization in racing.

From David Phillips’ notebook from Edmonton:

CONFIDENCE GAME
Want to motivate Paul Tracy? Bet against him. And let him know it.

While Tracy had plenty of reason to be motivated just by getting a ride here at the Rexall Edmonton Indy, he got a little extra boost when he found some of his old teammates were better against him.

“I came into this weekend and I learned that guys who were on my crew last year at Forsythe Racing were making bets that I wouldn’t crack the top twenty,” he said. “They felt it was me that was the problem at Forsythe. So that definitely gave me some extra motivation to prove that, hey, I can still do this. I can run up front with these guys that are a lot younger than me.

“It wasn’t big bets. It was only 20 bucks, five hundred bucks on another one. But it’s just the point of it. If there was no confidence there now (by the Forysthe crew), there probably wasn’t last year. So it’s gratifying to me this is probably one of the best races I’ve do ne in the last year or so. It feels good.”

Somewhere, Meesh is trying to find Luca Brasi to make sure Gerry Forsythe sleeps with da fishes.

Gerry takes his toys and goes home.

Looks as though Forsythe can’t overcome his antipathy against Tony George or the IRL after all:

Statement from Neil Micklewright, VP of Operations for Forsythe Championship Racing Ltd., LLC: 

“Forsythe Championship Racing is announcing today the cessation of its racing operations. After 13 years of competition in CART and the Champ Car World Series, the team has been unable to secure the necessary sponsorship to be able to compete in the Indy Racing League IndyCar Series in 2008. Forsythe Racing Inc., the parent company of FCR, will participate in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, the Champ Car finale, with drivers to be announced.”

Gerry had plenty of money to race before unification… but I guess he decided his money isn’t well spent unless it’s countering TG and his league.

At least he signed the agreement before he went off in a huff. The only question is whether Paul Tracy will follow him out the door… because it’s either that, or he’s going to have to drive a crapwagon.

Rumors of the Apocalypse are unfounded. For now.

Paul Tracy in the IRL. Not since Robby Gordon has there been a fit of pique that could have done more lasting damage to racing. And by racing I mean the lame neo-club scene that Champ Car and Indy racing have become.

Of course, the only real dirt we have on the situation comes from Robin Miller, a guy who spends a good 50% of his time at any given race in the media center telling his peers how great he is. It’s entertaining stuff in the same way as it’s entertaining watching a guy pick his nose at a stoplight and furtively eat it. But one thing Robin has going for him is that he’s one of only a handful of “legitimate” media personalities that still bothers to care about either the IRL or Champ Car, even though Champ Car yanked his hard card last season for daring to question the progress of their umpteenth “five-year plan.”

What this means is that Robin still gets guys in Champ Car to talk to him somehow. And apparently the Tracy-to-IRL thing was more than just a wild rumor cooked up by the True Faithful at a certain IRL-centric Internet community. Not much more, mind you - it was one of those stories of a guy knowing a guy who talked to a guy who represented a guy who was feeling things out - but at least it wasn’t pure fabrication (are you reading this, Sippy?).

What led up to the drastic temperature drop in Satan’s neighborhood? A classic case of Indian-giving, from what I hear. Apparently, Gerry Forsythe’s new business partner decided that Tracy’s long term contract that Forsythe wrangled with the Thrill from West Hill was about as appealing as rancid backbacon, and after one thing led to another Tracy was given what he interpreted as an ultimatum - renegotiate or get packed.

Now, while I believe that Tracy is one of the most overvalued athletes in motorsports, he is one of the few remaining links to the old CART (and the links to the old CART are basically what’s keeping Champ Car alive these days - otherwise, what use would the racing world have for the series?). My buddy John Oreovicz wrote a blog a few weeks ago when this was going down that Tracy’s departure from Champ Car would kill the series and bring about a de facto unification. I don’t buy it - if I’ve learned one thing about Kevin Kalkhoven, it’s that he’s persistent… and that he is not beholden to the CART legacy like many of Champ Car’s followers and participants are. Champ Car would have continued to slog along with brute, dull, plodding determination, Tracy or no Tracy.

But Tracy driving a car (whose derisive nickname among the Champ Car/CART cognoscenti - the “crapwagon” - was his own creation) in the IRL would certainly have meant something to the fans. Nothing exactly earth-shattering, to be fair - the Champ Car fans would have a new acronym to parade around (FPT - sounds vaguely Internetish or NASCARish, dontcha think?) and IRL fans would have another reason to believe that their series is “where it’s at” for the best of the best of American open-wheel (the examples of Sebastien Bourdais, Dario Franchitti, Juan Pablo Montoya, AJ Allmendinger and Jacques Villeneuve notwithstanding).

Thankfully for us all, equilibrium was restored at the last second - Forsythe relented, Tracy stayed, Hell enjoyed a new heat wave, and all was once again right with the open-wheel world. And by “right” I mean back to the same level of futility it was at before this brouhaha ever came to light.