Forsythe Championship Racing generally flies quietly under the radar, but in 2006, Gerald Forsythe's organization was often in the spotlight. Most surprisingly, it was not lead driver Paul Tracy making the headlines - on the track, at least. source: champcarworldseries.com / John Oreovicz No, FCR's 2006 will mostly be remembered for A.J. Allmendinger's all- too-brief nine-race tenure with the team, during which he won five times. The brash Californian certainly demonstrated that Forsythe's cars were often right on pace with Newman/Haas Racing's Lolas, but the pairing wasn't together long enough to mount a serious championship challenge to Sebastien Bourdais. Forsythe's 2006 campaign started badly when Mario Dominguez took teammate Tracy out at the very first corner of the Long Beach opener. It's debatable whether Tracy could have negotiated the corner on his own anyway, but the contact with Dominguez left the Canadian fuming trackside with a bent car. Dominguez continued on to finish fifth at Long Beach, and he went some way toward redeeming himself in the Forsythe team's eyes by claiming pole position at Houston. However, Mario was then pressured into spinning away the lead by eventual winner Bourdais and he ended the race third behind Bourdais and Tracy. During the Houston weekend, Tracy announced his intention to remain in the Champ Car World Series for the foreseeable future thanks to a five-year contract extension with Forsythe. In the process, he abandoned his plans to transition into stock car racing, an ironic situation in light of events to come with his future teammate. Following a lackluster run to sixth place at Monterrey, Dominguez sealed his fate when he crashed Tracy while trying to hold off the charging Canadian early in the Milwaukee race. A couple days later, Forsythe released the Mexican and replaced him with Allmendinger, who had just been let go by RuSPORT Racing. Thus began the most compelling storyline of the Champ Car season. In the course of four months beginning in early June, the 24-year old Californian lost his ride with the Champ Car team that was formed around him (RuSPORT), got engaged to his beauty-queen sweetheart, then quickly landed another top ride at Forsythe and promptly won the first two Champ Car races of his career at Portland and Cleveland.
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