This is the first part of a three-part interview with Chris. I spent a couple of days hanging out at home with Chris and his family. One day involved traveling several hours each way to a Pennsylvania Harley dealer in Johnstown, where Chris signed autographs and talked with his fans, something he really seems to enjoy. With a second career championship in hand, Chris was relaxed and confident about his chances for 2000, enjoying the time he was able to spend at home with wife Pam and sons Cale and Cameron.
The Carr family had just returned from a Caribbean cruise, spending some well-deserved time together without the pressures of racing bearing down on them.
Parts two and three of this interview will be posted in the next month, so please check back and download the remainder while you wait for the racing season to begin again.
1. So tell us about your vacation.
Vacation was long overdue. I don't think my wife and I had been on vacation since our honeymoon. It's been pretty much racing ever since then. It was nice to take her and the boys to the Caribbean. We went on a Royal Caribbean cruise, to San Juan, Puerto Rico and up to St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands, Nassau, Bahamas and even lodged on the coast of Haiti for a day, and that was a lot of fun. We enjoyed ourselves.
On Wednesday about halfway through the trip, we were in San Juan, PR, and my wife had bought a reversible ring at a nice jewelry shop in Old San Juan. About two hours later, we realized that we didn't have the camera bag - we had lost her camera. So we were on the boat, we were going to leave in a while, and I ran back into town to hit every shop we had gone to. Half of them were open and didn't have the camera, and the other half were closed. So, the next day when we were docked in St. Thomas, Pam went on her way to go shopping with the kids, and I had gone with my brother-in-law to go on a mountain-bike ride. I came back that afternoon and found out that she had called the jewelry store where she had bought the ring and they in fact had the camera, so that was great. It made the trip a lot better.
2. What do you have planned for the off-season?
|
|
|
|
Since we've been home, we went on vacation, and I haven't been on a bike for about a month, and I don't expect to get on a bike until I do a Supercamp the first week of December in San Jose. That and doing the awards banquet and getting through Christmas. Things will start getting pretty interesting around the first of January - I'll start getting keyed up physically for getting ready for the start of the season. Basically, you only have to look at getting keyed up for Daytona right now, then you have nine weeks off before the next race - there's not a whole lot there, really.
3. Any new sponsors lined up yet?
No particular sponsors lined up just yet. We're going racing no matter what with Harley-Davidson of Sacramento, Big Valley Ford, Kenny Tolbert, and myself. We're working on inside and outside-the-industry sponsors currently. Some have been or are currently involved in dirt track as well as some who are not. I'm hoping that those pan out in the next month or so.
4. What do you think about Rich King getting Scotty's former ride?
|
|
|
I think it's a great opportunity for Rich. It's a dream come true for just about any dirt tracker. I was there once. It certainly makes thing easier. But I think it's going to be interesting to see how well he and Bill Werner exist together. They're two pretty strong personalities, pretty opinionated, and it's going to be interesting to see how that works out.
5. Did H-D approach you at all?
No.
6. Speaking of H-D, let's ask some questions about road racing. Do you miss anything about road racing besides the factory salary?
I miss the riding part of it, when the bikes ran. I enjoyed road racing quite a bit. I was never afraid of it or anything. I mean, it was certainly frustrating at times being on a bike, when I was riding it, that wasn't quite there. At this point right now, it's closer than when I was riding it, but it's still not quite there yet. I miss the riding part of it, but I guess you could say I missed the people in dirt track racing more than I miss the people in road racing.
Do you keep track of how your former friends and competitors do in road racing?
Yeah, I get on www.amasuperbike.com quite a bit to find out what's happening with that. I do have some friends that I keep up with from my road racing days, and I always like to keep in touch with what they're doing. There's a lot of good people in road racing but they're not quite the 'family' that you find in dirt track.
If a competitive road racing team approached you to ride for them and offered a competitive package for you, would you go back to road racing?
I would consider it, but I don't expect that to happen ,and I'm not seeking it out.
What would you say is the biggest difference in your physical and mental preparation for dirt track versus road racing?
|
|
|
I think the biggest difference between my competitiveness in dirt track is that I know on any given day that I'm capable of winning. When I went road racing, I knew that wasn't the case. That's harder to deal with.
6b. Who do you see as the young guns who could be the next Grand National Champion? What qualities do they have that makes them special?
Well obviously Nicky Hayden, but we're going to lose him to the road racing world, if not part-time, full-time real soon. Nicky is probably the most naturally talented dirt tracker that I've seen come along in a long, long time. Other riders that I think are going to do real well that are young, and by young, I mean 22 and under, are Bryan Bigelow, if he can just tone down his aggression a little bit. He's riding a little bit on the dirty side in the eyes of a lot of people out there, and if he can learn how to pass without having to run people off the groove, or running them up into the fence or running into them, I think he could do a lot of good things in the future. I think he wants to win so bad, that that's part of his problem right there - do it at all costs - and that's not necessary. Those are the two that I see as the biggest part of our future right now.
7. I assume you are going to retain your mechanic Kenny Tolbert for 2000. How long have you known him now?
I never really knew Kenny until we started working together. I got to know him, and the guy sort of grows on you. We first started working together in 1988 when I became a full factory rider with Harley-Davidson. Ever since then, we just gelled really well. Our communication is to the point where, y'know, I can say the bike's doing this, and we can collaborate on how we need to fix it. I've got some ideas, and he keeps me in check and I keep him in check. When I feel lost, he seems to have the answer, and when he feels lost, I seem to have the answer. It just really works out well that way.
What do you try to provide KT with as feedback?
I tell him what the bike's doing, and what I would like to see it do. A lot of times we went to tracks this year and the thing never did anything wrong - it was good from the start. I mean, I can count of my hands - probably ten races - where all we did was play with tires. Tires were a big deal in '99 with three different brands of tires to run. We just (worked on) the right tire on the bike. Our baseline setup was pretty solid. We probably changed triple clamp angles less this year than we ever have, simply because we found a very good baseline setup. We just sorted out tires for the most part.
Sometimes it seems as if you and KT have sort of an unspoken understanding of how to get the machine to perform best. Is this a viable observation? Have you ever had this sort of 'ESP' before with any other tuners?
I guess if you're looking from the outside in, you can see that, but we go over it a lot in detail what things are doing with the bike, how's it reacting here, what happens at certain positions of the throttle, and how the thing's steering, that type of stuff. We go over that a lot of that more than people really think.