8/9/00

Tire Choice, Catch-up Game Relegates Carr to Fourth in Rapid City.

The Wednesday night race at Rapid City, now a wrenchead.com series event, is typically one of the highlights of Sturgis Bike Week, at least to those in attendance aware that people actually race Harleys.

After practice on the loamy South Dakota half-mile showed promising results aboard the 600cc bike, the team switched to the 750cc Harley for the qualifying races. A questionable tire choice almost forced Chris to the semi, but some adjustments brought them right back to where they started: fourth. Now third in the PACE series and in the hunt for the championship despite some bad luck, Carr looks forward to some good fortune in the remainder of the series.

"Rapid City started off and ended about the same. In the wrenchead.com series, practice is your qualifying, it doubles as that, and we qualified fourth fastest. Actually did that on the 600, we were about 0.15 seconds faster on it than we were on the 750 in qualifying. When it came to race time, they had put some water on the racetrack, and I just felt like, over the long haul, the 750 would be the better bike to ride. We chose to run the 750 in the heat race and struggled. Actually, we didn't have the right tire choice, in our opinion, and we ended going from running up near the front early to a distant third and damned near fourth when the eight-lap heat race was over.

"We regrouped while they ran the semis and last chance qualifiers and all that, and we changed tires, changed gearing, and made a few chassis adjustments, and got back up to fourth fastest, basically, by the end of the main event. That's where we ended up finishing. So, we were pleased to get back up where we were, but obviously we were disappointed that we lost our way there earlier in the night. We feel good about the fourth-place finish, but obviously we would have like to have been further up."

Do you feel like you second-guessed yourself out of a higher finish by changing bikes, or was it the right choice in the end?

"I honestly believe it was the right choice for me. Hindsight's 20/20 in one sense, I guess, but we rode the right motorcycle, we just made the wrong choice on tires in our heat race and it set us back a little ways. I feel that if we basically outguessed ourselves on the racetrack, and what we need to have for a rear tire in the heat race. That's what set us back the most. Had we had the right tire on for that heat race, we would have been able to maybe run a little bit better and make some better adjustments for the main event. We just kind of put ourselves a few steps back in the heat race."

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