This bud’s for you:

Buddy, welcome to the team! I hope things work out for you and frankly, I hope you get the ride next year. I have always admired your Atlantic work and figured, like a lot of drivers, you were wasting your talents in the IRL. This is not a dig at the IRL, it’s the fact that you are a road racer and now have an opportunity to show off your skills. You had a great run in the Atlantics and now are back where you belong, even if it took a while for you to get there. You are jumping in the most coveted seat in all of American open-wheel racing. You are also about to drive for a man that clearly doesn’t tolerate mediocrity, so the pressure is on. This is a one race tryout, albeit under the best circumstances for you. The championship is clinched and it’s the last race of the season. You, along with at least 12 other drivers will be driving for jobs in 2008. That means that it will be every driver for himself out there, mano a mano. The pressure of jumping into a car that has won 5 times this year must be incredible, but you can handle it.

I loved your Indy 500 win and hope that you are fully recovered from your accident that prevented you in participating a year later. I don’t mean physically recovered, but mentally. I believe that you are and that it was Rahal-Letterman racing that was the problem and not you. I hope I am correct, because I am a fan of yours.

This is great for the Champ Car World Series. This will allow the fans, media and personnel to forget about AJ and his timely departure to NASCAR. It will allow us bloggers to focus on you and the other potential new and existing drivers in Mexico. You are American made, in the Jimmy Vasser mold and this is what the series needs.

Should you get a second teammate in the form of Michel Jourdain, don’t be surprised if he races the race of his life. Because, frankly, as big as this is for you Buddy, it may even be bigger for Michel. Things haven’t really worked out for him in NASCAR. Though he has been quick at times, things haven’t gone the way he would have liked too. We know he doesn’t need the money. He needs the respect and this is his opportunity to get it back. He will never forget (and most of us won’t either) when he lead some laps in Mexico City some years back and the crowd response he received. Of course, he was out of sequence and was only a matter of laps before he had to pit, but that didn’t matter to the hundred thousand Mexican fans. He wants that feeling again, because it’s been, well since that day that he’s received it. Jourdain, should he get that ride, will be a man on a mission. Forsythe will definitely be the team to beat in Mexico.

Oh champ car, PLEASE take me there. This race is going to be unbelievable!!!!