Chris now leads the championship by 76 points with just one round remaining and needs only 5 points in the final round at Del Mar to take the first PACE dirt track championship.

You've won your second PACE race of the year at Manzanita, how was it?

"The race went pretty good for us, we qualified 6th fastest. We had a little trouble in practice, I twisted my knee again that I had injured in Seattle so that kind of slowed us down a little bit due to qualifying but once the track had dried up a little bit and slickened off we were able to slide the foot a little easier through corners and didn't have any other problem with my knee later on in the night. Got off the line 4th in the heat race and had to march to the front and win the heat, was able to pass Kevin Varnes and Johnny Murphree and Will Davis all in order, running my little single round the outside of the 750s. Things were going good, sat on the pole for the main event and got the hole shot, won the Yuasa Batteries hard charger award. I had Springer chase me the whole race - he kept me honest - and we had to ride hard the whole 25 laps and stay in front of him, he stayed about 10 bike lengths back for the majority of the race and it went good for us."

Well, you've got almost enough points to clinch but only need a few points in Del Mar.

" Basically the way the points are, I can get like 12th in the last chance qualifier and still win the championship so...we make the main event, we're in, we won.. We'll go out there and hope to have a good qualifying and run a good heat race and go out and have fun in the main. "

How are you going to celebrate that?

" Oh...I don't know.... I have no idea, we'll worry about that when the time comes. "

You seem to be really good running the single against the 750 twins- what do you think the reason is for that?

"I think that the reason is that Kenny Tolbert builds a really good single. The thing is working real good, we've spent a lot of time working with the new C&J chassis this year on it, running the half miles down in Florida when it was 600, and now that it is a PACE legal 676, the thing now puts out some good numbers but more importantly it puts the power to the ground and you don't have to push around 80 extra pounds and an extra cylinder on a single and the thing seems to work pretty good for us. I've always enjoyed riding a 600, I think when you get on a smaller, lighter bike that doesn't quite have the power of a 750 you can ride them harder - get away with more - where as on a 750 you are kind of sliding around trying to keep the thing from going sideways because they light up so easy. On a 600 you can be a lot more aggressive and I like racing aggressively and a 600 lets me do that. "

Well, obviously you are going to be on a 750 at Del Mar.

"Oh, more than likely, yeah (laughs.) "