"We were rippin'. We were pretty good out of the box. We won our scratch heat over Parker and Ronnie Jones, so we felt good going into the heat races, and then they almost rained us out with the water truck. That was probably a good thing because the track turned out to be the best track that I ever remember there. I had a good start in the heat race, and was running up front, then we had a red flag because Atherton had gone down, and we restarted and picked up the pace where we left off. We had times that would have probably put us on the pole for the main event had we not had the restart.

"Come the main event, I got a good start initially and then Schnabel crashed and brought out the red. Next time around, somebody jumped, the light went from yellow to red, and I jumped after the red came on, and so did a few others. There was six of us on the penalty line, including Parker. Got a good start, the Kenny Tolbert bike was just glued to the ground, we got to the front in a hurry, about lap six or seven, and set sail. I have never been on a motorcycle that worked as good as it did on that particular night on a half-mile. That thing was glued to the ground. It made my job so much easier. We just pulled away from 'em."

Another mile looms, the loamy oval at DuQuoin.