SPEED GENES; Graham Rahal gives Champ Car its own second-generation star.(2007 Fan Guide)

Byline: Steven Cole Smith

Despite the fact that half of the Champ Car World Series' scheduled 16 races for 2007 are outside the United States, let's face it, this is an American series. And undeniably, the central rallying point last season for U.S. fans was the presence of driver A.J. Allmendinger, who won five races despite changing teams early in the season and moving on to another series before Champ Car's season ended.

That series is, of course, NASCAR Nextel Cup, where Allmendinger's longtime personal sponsor, Red Bull, and new NASCAR Cup competitor Toyota made him an offer he couldn't refuse and his generous, well-funded team, Forsythe Racing, couldn't match.

With the only full-time American Champ Car driver gone from the grid, who is there to root for?

"Well,'' said Allmendinger, "Graham Rahal will certainly bear watching, after what he did last year.''

The son of former Champ Car champion and Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal, Graham did for the Champ Car Atlantic Series in 2006 what Allmendinger did for Champ Car: kept a Frenchman, who eventually won the series title, honest. Rahal lost the Atlantic championship to Simon Pagenaud, though the patient Pagenaud won just one race to Rahal's five. Pagenaud is a protege of three-time Champ Car champion Sebastien Bourdais, whom Allmendinger dogged all season.

Recall Allmendinger's headline-making statement last September. "No way I'm letting a French guy clinch on American soil,'' he declared (tongue in cheek) in Road America's victory lane, after becoming the first American driver to win a Champ Car race there since 1996. The win delayed Bourdais' formal championship declaration until the next race.