IRL: Andretti Green Racing splits into two entities

As Auto123.com revealed on Thursday morning, beginning in 2010, Michael Andretti (photo) will run the race team, while partners will run Toronto and St. Petersburg IRL races.

On Thursday, team shareholders announced that Andretti Green Racing and Andretti Green Promotions would be split into two entities beginning with the 2010 season.

In a joint statement the owners said “Since becoming partners in 2002, we have been fortunate to see our companies expand and diversify quickly and successfully. All of us believe that this decision will maximize the potential of both companies in the future.”

The race team, which traces its’ roots to driver Jacques Villeneuve, and co-owners Gerald Forsythe and Barry Green (Forsythe-Green Racing going back to 1994) will be wholly-owned and run by Andretti who told the Indianapolis Star his renewal talks with Danica Patrick were going well.

Andretti Green Promotions, which puts on the street race in Toronto and St. Petersburg, will be spun off and run by Andretti’s partners Kim Green (brother of Barry) and Kevin Savoree who was Barry Green’s CPA and long-time advisor.

In 1995 Barry Green, with Villeneuve as driver, won the Indy 500 and CART Championship. In 2002, while the team ran full-time CART, it had a one-off shot at winning the Indy 500 with Paul Tracy’s who had a controversial loss to Brazil’s Helio Castroneves.

In 2001 Andretti, the winningest (with 42 wins) driver in the now defunct CART series joined Green as a driver, the following year he, Kim Green, and Savoree bought out Barry Green to form Andretti Green Racing. Andretti raced part-time in 2003 and 2006 and retired, as a driver after the Indy 500 in 2007.

Andretti told SpeedTV’s Robin Miller “We owed it to our business to do this because neither side was getting 110 percent and both sides were suffering," he said.

Currently the AGR stable includes Patrick, 2004 IndyCar series’ champ Tony Kanaan, Andretti’s son, Marco and Hideki Mutoh.