The H-D of Sacramento/ Wrenchead.com team now moves on to Portland this weekend and begins to focus on the chase for the championship in the Formula-USA dirt track series, which Chris leads comfortably at this point.

"I caught Will (Davis) at the end. We had both slowed down because Hacker was puking oil again. I was a little leery and ran some conservative lines underneath where Hacker was, and not necessarily the fast lines for the whole three laps where he was smoking before they got him off the racetrack, and that kind of killed my momentum a little bit. But once I got near Will, I was able to hook up with him, and we were actually gaining on the top four guys the last lap-and-a-half. But we came up too short. We needed another five laps in the race to be able to do anything with him."

Two AMA races remain for you. You're going to skip Vernon Downs to run Portland on the PACE circuit. How does that affect your championship hopes?

"Well, I don't know how many points I'm down right now, it's probably in the teens behind Kopp or somewhere around there. I can certainly be eliminated next week from the championship chase. I mean, I don't want to wish bad luck on anybody, I know those guys have been working hard all year long, but I think the only way I really have a realistic shot at the championship is if they have a couple of DNFs. I don't want to wish that on anybody."

Have you seen next week's track at Portland before?

"I caught a glimpse of it- I was watching a World of Outlaws race on TV and I caught it on one of the motorsports shows. It looks like some nice red clay, and when the sprint cars were out there, they didn't have any rubber on it, so it looks like some fresh dirt. We'll see how it goes."