8/13/00

Grand National Win Number Twelve for Carr at Peoria.

As expected, Chris took the victory at Peoria, although not without drama.

With no rear brakes at the halfway point, a huge lead turned into a much smaller one as Chris fought off the mechanical problem to continue his win streak. With the paper-clip shape of the Peoria track requiring massive braking at the end of the straights, the performance considering the difficulty factor is unbelievable, but that's Carr at Peoria.

"The racetrack at Peoria was absolutely awesome, the best I've seen in about twelve years. The lap times throughout practice and a few of them in my heats were really close to the old track record I set in 1989, and I didn't think we'd ever have a chance of getting anywhere near that again. (Editor's note: Carr set the single lap record of 25.550 seconds in 1989 and it has held up ever since.)So the track was really good. I won my scratch heat going away over Rich King. I ended up being second-fastest behind Dan Stanley, he had the fastest scratch heat. I went out in the heat race and put my head down for ten hard laps and ran every single lap in the heat race in the 25-second bracket, which I had never done before. Our heat race ended up being six seconds faster than Stanley's, ten faster than Kopp's, and fourteen faster than Poovey's. We were feeling really good going into the main event.

"The main event comes around, we got the holeshot again (our third one of the day) and proceeded to stretch a lead. We had about a straightaway lead at the halfway point, when my rear brake decided to give away on me and cease operating. I had a few close moments there for a while and then we got into some lapped traffic and I got into turn one kind of hot and it looked as thought I was going to collect Donnie Steward because I couldn't slow down, and I really started pumping on that brake pedal. On my bike, when the brake pedal goes down, it hits the exhaust pipe. Well, I hit the thing so hard, it ended up wrapping around the exhaust pipe. It locked up the rear wheel and killed the motor! I frantically got the brake free and got the clutch pulled in and coasted the thing, turned it away from the haybales, bump-started it off and dodged a major bullet. I think I dodged a grenade actually (laughs.)

"I got the thing going and it took me a few laps to learn how to ride the Peoria TT without a rear brake, but we were able to hold off the challenge of Joe Kopp from that point on. Although it might have looked easy on paper, it certainly wasn't easy from my point of view."

Were you using a lot of front brake to make up for the loss of the rear?

"Well, I use a lot of front brake there anyhow, and I was having to basically use 100% front brake during the last half of the race. I guess I used a lot more rear brake than I ever thought I did. When all of a sudden you don't have it...it didn't allow me to get the bike sideways hard under braking with both wheels going into the corner. So I had to figure out how to do it all over again. We had some close calls, but we made it through."

You had to be glad that Grand National TT racing allows the use of a front brake.

"No kidding...certainly as tight as the corners are at each end of the racetrack. It was one of those things where we felt good all day long, the bike was perfect. We never made one adjustment. We never cut the rear tire. We never made one chassis adjustment. All we did was pour gas in it and go all day long."

Hagerstown is the next event, what are your thoughts on that?.

"Well, I've always struggled at Hagerstown, my best finish was a long time ago. It was about ten years ago, I got about a third place, I guess, maybe a second one time. Not my favorite track. We'll buckle down and maybe we'll do good there this year."

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