4/21/01

Team Misses Setup, Takes Fifth (or Maybe Fourth) in Houston.

A shorter post-Daytona break than recent seasons have provided put the AMA Grand National series in Houston in April. After testing in Texas earlier in the week, the H-D of Sacramento team looked forward to a good performance at the second round of 2001, held at Houston Raceway Park, a brand new venue for the series.

Chris transferred directly from his heat, and hoelshot the main, but the team missed the setup a bit, and Carr had to settle for fifth. That position was tentatively improved to fourth post-race after Jay Springsteen's third-place was disallowed over illegal fuel. The final result is awaiting the results of a laboratory test on the suspect fuel sample.

You finished fifth, or possibly fourth, if Springer is indeed disqualified.

"I find it kind of hard to believe that Springer's illegal, so we'll see what happens on that.

"I got the holeshot, I think I led for maybe a lap. Then they just started going by me. Schnabel went by me first, and he was flat on the gas. Then Kopp, then Springer, then Coolbeth, then Varnes, they just kept truckin' on by me. We just didn't quite have our setup right, and I ended up getting a position back, with Coolbeth breaking a shock late in the race - which was unfortunate for him - so we got a least one gift position. We had a fifth or sixth-placed bike, y'know, that's pretty much it. We just didn't get our setup the way we needed it."

Was there a problem with traction or power or something else?

"This was kind of a weird track. It started out as real hard and it had plenty of moisture in it when we started. It started drying out and laying a little rubber down. Clouds came in, the sun went away, and the moisture came to the surface like you can't imagine. They never had to water the track all day long and the thing got greasy, actually, for a while - almost to the point where we thought it might be unrideable. But the more we rode on it, the better it got. There was actually quite a bit of traction late in the race. But we just weren't getting all the power that we needed to the ground."

Next race is in Ft. Worth. Have you tested there in the off-season?

"No, I raced there twice last year. But I imagine, with Morehead working the track, that the racetrack will be similar to what we had here in Houston, more than likely, because the dirt is identical. I think the track here (in Houston), for the first time, was not so bad, it was just kind of funky and weird - we hadn't seen dirt like that in a while."

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