5/25-26/03

Carr Inches Short of Record Sixth Straight Springfield Mile Win; TT Just a Survival Effort.

Flat track spring break ended last weekend with the running of the Springfield double header, and the teams got back to work at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. Chris came into the legendary Mile with a streak of five straight wins, looking to add a sixth, but Harley's Rich King had just enough ponies and a good dose of strategy, ending Carr's streak by a mere three inches at the checkered flag.

The TT race, postponed due to weather until Monday afternoon, was a bit of a struggle for the Ford QCCPOV team on their production-framed VOR motocrosser. With little testing on the Italian machine, Chris fought through qualifying, needing a semi to make the program, then just maintained during the final, taking a safe eighth.

Another short track looms this weekend, with a three-eighths mile deal in Chillicothe, Ohio. The production VOR will be parked, and the C&J-framed weapon, fresh from a Daytona win and second at Tunica, will be rolled out to battle again. Carr maintains a healthy lead in the points, 72-58, over a tie between Johnny Murphree and Joe Kopp.

Springfield Mile

"Well the day started off pretty good. We were going really good in practice. We had bikes with two different setups and the one setup that we had been testing on recently worked really, really good. In fact, we ended up running that versus our old Springfield setup, and it was good. We cut some really fast laps in practice and in our scratch heat, and certainly in the heat races - we got away from (Steve) Beattie and (Gary) Rogers there for a while. That was a nice battle with them in the heat race. I got away from them for about four or five laps, and then those guys got back on me right before the white flag and IO was able to pull a move in turn four on the last lap and get away from them and beat them to the line. So it was a good race, I was glad to see Gary Rogers doing well. He had taken a Supercamp over the winter and that was good to see him put that thing in the main event at Springfield.

"We ended up being fast heat, so we sat on pole for the main event, and we felt good about how everything was going. Got an average start in the main event, I wasn't too keen on getting a holeshot anyway, because I didn't really care. We never dropped back any further than sixth place the entire race. Early on, (Joe) Kopp, (Rich) King, and (Kevin) Atherton were up front. Springer poked his head in there a few times along the way. Then we got a red flag, so everybody stopped after about seven laps and looked the bikes over. Everything looked good with ours, it felt good.

"We got going on the single file restart and I parked it in about fourth place for the majority of the race. I took the lead - I think - about lap fourteen for the first time, then it just kind of see-sawed back and forth. Got the five to go and dropped the hammer. The pace picked up quite a bit, and King was obviously the guy to beat. His bike really squirted off the corners really good. He wasn't particularly good through the middle of the corners, but whenever he was in the lead, he was definitely the toughest guy on the track to draft. Like I said, he didn't carry a ton of corner speed, but when he got the thing pointed and picked up coming off the corners, that thing of his ran pretty good. We had to get a run on him to get some momentum going and pick up the draft and go by.

"Last lap, I actually came across for the white flag thinking it was going to be the checkered. I had burned those guys pretty good through three and four, and I had put a tiny little gap on them. I came across thinking I had won the race, and I saw that the flag was white and I thought, 'Oh shit! That was the wrong lap!'

"I counted backwards wrong, I'll have to practice that. I guess that's from watching Leeann Tweeden's 5-4-3-2-1. I get to one and I'm all screwed up. It didn't hurt me that much, though, because the only guy that went by me was King going into turn one and I thought, 'Well, that's okay. Being second off of turn two is no big deal.' He got through one and two a little better than he had the rest of the race, and I just wasn't able to draft by down the back stretch. Lined up for the run off of turn four and I came up three inches short according to the camera, so that's the way it goes. We were in the hunt, we just didn't pull it off. That streak came to an end, so we'll come back in September and start a new one."

Springfield TT

"The TT - we struggled. People think every time there's a TT, we're going to be in the hunt to win, and we certainly were not on Monday. This is the first time we've really done any serious riding on the production-based VOR, and we found some issues with it. We hadn't put a whole lot of stock in testing with it. Throughout the winter, we've been working on our short track and our half-mile and mile program, and we just kind of left our little arena TT bike alone. We figured we show up and see how things worked out, and we were certainly outgunned - not by horsepower, but by handling. I had my hands full with the VOR.

"Heat race was loaded, it might as well have been the main event, it seemed like. A lot of good riders, and by virtue of a third place finish in my scratch heat, I was coming from the second row, and I didn't get a great start, and found myself running around in fifth behind Atherton, with no way to get by him without killing him. We finished fifth and went to the semi.

"In the semi I got a decent start, got up behind Shawn Clark, he was going pretty good, and Tommy Hayden was coming from the second row, so I knew he was going to be solid. About halfway through, it was Clark, myself, and Hayden. We had, at one time, about a five bike length gap on Tommy, and I was in a transfer spot. I looked back again, and Tommy was right on my butt, so I figured, 'Man, I've got to get by Shawn now!' I lined him up on lap sox and got a good run off the jump, and I squeezed it underneath him going into the right-hander. I guess Tommy got by him a couple of turns later, then ultimately Tommy got me the next lap. So we were in the main event. That was our big concern. Second place in the points was King, and he was on the sidelines - he didn't make the feature - so we were a step closer in our goal, and that was to maintain our points lead.

"In the main event, I went out and just rode around. I did what I could with what we had, and finished a pretty solid eighth, considering we didn't have a bike that was capable of winning on that day. Congratulations to Brett Landes, he looked awesome, he deserved to win."


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