"The race started off real well for us. We had been getting good starts all night long. We got our third holeshot of the night in the feature and led the first four or five laps. Winkin' Will came by me on the inside going into turn three. I tried matching pace with him, and there was just no doin' it. He was pretty much on rails, riding his bike real well, and I couldn't keep up with him. We had a solid second, we ran second the rest of the race. We were never seriously challenged for that position. In the end, my title rival Parker had broken earlier in the race. I didn't know it. We came out of there with a much bigger gap than we expected. That's kind of a bonus for us, bad luck for Scottie. I guess that's part of racing, y'know? These things break every now and then, and he had some bad luck.

"The heat race was a wild one for me. I got the holeshot, and stretched out maybe a half-a-straightaway lead on Scott Parker, Rich King, and I was going through turn four, and all of a sudden my bike starts going really flat. It took me a moment to figure out what the hell was wrong. The petcock on the inside got knocked forward and turned off and the thing went on one cylinder. By the time I had figured that out, I was running fourth behind Parker, King, and Landes. I only had two-and-a-half laps left and we were able to get a run on the guys - I got by Brett Landes going into turn one on the last lap and got a good run down the back straightaway and put a good move on King and Parker around the outside on the last lap, went from fourth to first at the end of the race. We got away with one. It was pretty wild.

"I ended up running a line on the last lap that I hadn't been running the whole heat race. I had been running down on the groove, and nobody was seriously challenging, so I stayed down there. The guys in the heat races earlier had been running a little bit above the groove and nobody went around me up there, so I didn't see any reason to go up there. I had the idea that, 'hey, here I am fourth with a lap to go, I gotta do something, I might as well try and win this thing, or at least get second,' and maybe have a second row start, because if it didn't work, I' m going to the semi. Heck, it's only one more row back, no big deal. Heck if it didn't work out best, put us up front and give us a front row start for the main event, which I holeshotted. So, the gamble paid off at the end."

The Midwestern furnace of Oklahoma City is next. Asked about the oppressive heat and the sometimes rough track in Oklahoma, Chris commented, "the rougher, and hotter, the better I like it."