5/29/99

Carr crashes, remounts to take second.

Springfield, Illinois is almost always a race to remember, for racers and fans alike, and the 2000 Memorial Day version was no exception.

After Saturday rains soaked the black Illinois loam, the race was called early in the day and moved to Monday afternoon. Chris made practical use of his time by inviting many of the Grand National regulars over to the Coliseum to have some fun on XR100s, as American Supercamp was conducting school in the nearby arena. As one might imagine, it was an exciting afternoon, described by Supercamp founder Danny Walker as, "insane."

A beautiful day unfolded Monday, and with the track finally ready for battle, Chris landed a front row start with a win over road race regular Larry Pegram in heat five. The main event started innocently enough, but on lap five, Pegram crashed entering turn one, and several other riders were forced into crashing as they avoided the fallen Ohioan. Chris was unfortunately one of those to find the hay bales.

Kenny Tolbert and Travis Smith did an incredible job of bending Chris' twisted XR750 back into raceable condition just in time for the restart, which saw Chris in last place in the single file lineup. With 21 laps left to save the day, Carr, tore through the field, eventually taking the lead on the penultimate lap. With his bike visibly wobbling from crash damage, the gritty reigning champion managed to draft rival Rich King to the finish for second, unable to hold off the rocket-fast veteran Jay Springsteen, but undoubtedly satisfied with salvaging second from what appeared to be a lost cause only minutes before.

"Pegram slid out about the fifth lap and slid out in front of me and ended up collecting about five of us total. Pegram went down, I went down, Stanley, Paul Morgan, and Steve Beattie, on about the fifth lap going into turn one. Got the bike patched back up, started dead last, and worked our way back up to the front. We had a chance to win the sucker, but ended up coming up a little bit short. We had 21 laps, and I started fifteenth, I guess, on the single file restart. Got 'er going, moved to the front, just came up short. Ended up drafting by King coming to the line, but Springer ended up putting about five bike lengths on all of in the last couple of laps. Thinking back, we're disappointed about coming in second because we felt we had a chance to win, but after all that happened, we're pretty pleased to come out of there with second place. "

Are you okay? Anything broken?

"I don't' know yet, I'm going to get some X-rays tomorrow. I might have some hairline fractures here and there, but other than that, I think everything's cool. Everything's functioning, it's just not functioning at 100%. We'll just see what's happening after we get the X-rays. "

What's next on the schedule?

"I've got a weekend off, then we're going to Topeka Kansas. "

What are you going to do on your weekend off?

"Relax, and get stuff done at home, and probably have to mow my lawn (laughs). "

Back to the 2000 Schedule

Back to the News page