Andretti Green Racing

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Dario Franchitti's car being pushed up to qualify for the 2006 Indianapolis 500

Andretti Green Racing is an auto racing team that competes in the IRL IndyCar Series and the American Le Mans Series.

1 Early years in CART
2 Change to the IRL
3 American Le Mans Series
4 Drivers
5 Notes
6 External links

[edit] Early years in CART

Founded in 1993 by Barry Green and Gerry Forsythe as Forsythe Green Racing, they fielded two Atlantic cars for Claude Bourbonais and Jacques Villeneuve. In 1994 Barry Green and Gerry Forsythe split up and Barry renamed the team Team Green, with his brother Kim Green joining as team manager, and competing in the 1994 CART championship as a single car team for Jacques, eventually winning both the Indianapolis 500 and the CART championship in 1995. In 1996 Team Green became known as the Brahma Sports Team for a season, with driver Raul Boesel. In 1997 KOOL tobacco took over as a major sponsor with Parker Johnstone, before expanding to a two-car effort in 1998 with Paul Tracy and rising youngster Dario Franchitti. The two stayed on as teammates for five seasons.

In 2001, Michael Andretti joined the team in a separate effort headed by Kim Green, known as Team Motorola. Andretti won his last race as a driver at the '02 Long Beach Grand Prix. In 2002 switched from Reynard to Lola chassis, producing a striking new livery to coincide with the change.

[edit] Change to the IRL

After major problems in CART surfaced, Andretti, who had purchased majority interest in the team, switched the newly-renamed Andretti Green Racing in 2003 to the rival IRL series. Tracy left the team to stay in Champ Car, with Tony Kanaan joining Franchitti and Andretti. Andretti retired after the 2003 Indianapolis 500, and Dan Wheldon took his place.

AGR has run four cars since the beginning of 2004, with Bryan Herta behind the wheel of the additional car. Kanaan and Wheldon won consecutive IRL titles in 2004 and 2005, with Wheldon winning the Indianapolis 500 in 2005. Andretti referred to the win as his very own, as good as if he had won it as a driver, because of the nuances of car ownership and building his own team.^{[citation needed]}

Wheldon's championship was his last before free agency, and joining the Target Chip Ganassi Racing team in 2006. He was replaced by Micheal's son, Marco Andretti. Michael Andretti came out of retirement to qualify for the 2006 Indy 500 to help his team defend their championship.

It was announced on July 25, 2006, that Danica Patrick would join the team for the 2007 IndyCar season.^[1]

The team has been compared as the IRL's version of NASCAR's Roush Fenway Racing, for being the largest team in the League.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] American Le Mans Series

In 2006, it was announced that AGR would join Acura as one of the official works teams.^[2] The team worked with Highcroft Racing on the development of the Courage LC75 chassis. The team debuted the newly-renamed Acura ARX-01a at the 2007 12 Hours of Sebring. The AGR team finished second overall, and took the maiden LMP2 win for Acura with drivers Dario Franchitti, Bryan Herta, and Tony Kanaan.