Making a return to the PACE Formula USA wrenchead.com Dirt Track Series after a two-month hiatus, Chris and crew visited the Oklahoma City half-mile, where they had tasted victory a year earlier when it was part of the AMA championship.Opting to ride his 600 Rotax in the PACE series, where the choice of motorcycle makes for interesting combinations, Chris took a fall in his heat race, restarted and won, then took over the lead in the main, only to fall again in a controversial clash with factory Harley rider Rich King.
"In the main event, we started off good, got off the line second behind Rich King, followed him around for about seven or eight laps, then the red flag came out for Kevin Varnes, who had gone down all by himself and was way off the racing line in (turns) one and two. The starter thought it was necessary to bring out the red flag for him. Then we lined back up, and I didn't get a real good jump on the restart, ended up dropping back to fourth behind King, Joe Kopp, and Jay Springsteen, so I was running fourth. Got by Springsteen in one and two, he had slipped up a little wide and we got underneath him clean through there. Then Kopp and I were hounding King for about four or five laps or so, and Kopp unsuccessfully attempted a few passes to get by him, and then all of a sudden, Rich's pace slowed down tremendously. We were really swarming on him then. I was able to get around Kopp and was following King for about a lap, and went around him going into turn three on the outside. I was rolling through the middle up on the outside of the groove, and all of a sudden in turn four he come back by and the tail section of his motorcycle just ripped the handlebars right out of my hand and I found myself laying on the ground and out of the race. That's pretty much how Oklahoma City went for me."
Any hard feelings between you and King there?
"Well, I've been pretty pissed off about that for the past 24 hours or so, and I know Rich King didn't go in there and intentionally put me on the race track, he didn't put me down on purpose. I know that. But his motorcycle did hit mine, and he was the one on top of it. I mean, I don't have any hard feelings, I can't carry a grudge out here. This business is too dangerous for us to do anything like that. I didn't go down because I made a mistake, I went down because somebody else did, and that's just the way I feel."
Why did you choose to run a 600?
"I felt comfortable running a 600. (Editor's note: It was an AMA legal 600.) I just felt like I could get through the corners-this track was not all that great, the groove was narrow, the groove was slippery. The track was about a second-and-a-half slower than the track we had there a year ago. History has shown us that, in the past, when you have a dry slick track like Oklahoma City, that 600s go just as fast as 750s,and sometimes, in some cases, faster. I felt like we were the fastest guys in the racetrack, I just didn't get to show it at the end. There were a lot of 600s in the field."