The Hagerstown win boosted his point lead to 26 points and had to add some confidence as this weekend rolls around at Peoria Illinois for the famed TT. As the AMA recently announced some rule changes for 2004 that make it impossible to race on bikes like his trusty Woods-framed Rotax twin shocker next year, this year's TT will be a last hurrah for that war horse. Carr plans to put it on top of the podium.

"We had a good time going out there to Sturgis. I got kind of banged up there at the Laguna Supermoto. I felt like I needed to go ride, and made an attempt to get the track down in Houston after the Formula USA race to get a day of testing, and it was just going to cost too much, so we decided to pack up and head up to Rapid City. We had a chance to ride on three different half-miles and do some more runs on the Vor and try to get our ducks in a row for the final push at the end of the year, and it worked out pretty good. We ended up making money instead of spending money.

"Ed Beckley was running all the races out there for the most part, and he had a half-mile in Huron, South Dakota on Sunday the 3rd, and that was a good time, and then we went off to the Sturgis short track and we won there. Then we won both classes at the Sturgis half-mile Hotshoe and the Rapid City half-mile Hotshoe. So, it was a good week for us, a chance to get my bearings back, get my racing legs going again. I'm glad we went - I don't think we would have won Hagerstown had we not."

You won at Hagerstown this weekend, how did that go for you?

"Hagerstown was pretty good. We were fairly competitive all night long. We had one practice session where we were really slow, but we made some changes, and we just kept working on the bike all night long .

"The scratch heat was pretty good. We got out in front of (Kenny) Coolbeth, and he kept me honest the whole four laps and I held him off at bay. We were a couple a tenths a lap slower than guys like (Mike) Hacker - Hacker was hauling ass, he was fast all night long, I knew he was going to be the guy to beat.

"Heat race, got off the line second behind (Kevin) Atherton, followed him for a couple laps, was able to get by him on the inside coming off of turn four, and just kind of marched away from him a bit - still, our lap times were a couple of tenths of a second a lap off guys like Hacker and (Joe) Kopp, and (Johnny) Murphree, who stayed pretty equal with Kopp in his heat race.

"It was not necessarily back to the drawing board, but we couldn't get the acceleration off the corner - we were getting good traction, the thing just wasn't jumping off the corner the way we wanted. So we made a bunch of changes for the main event - changed the gearing, changed exhaust pipes, changed timing, air pressures, the whole bit - in an effort to make the bike a couple of tenths a lap faster, and it worked out. We really put our heads together. It was a good team effort with Kenny Tolbert and Richard Bates and myself. The thing was better in the main event than it had been all night. I got the holeshot, and Hacker stayed on my ass for about the first ten laps, and then I got away from him a bit, and just kind of slowly kept increasing the gap, and it was perfect main event for us, so we were real happy. It was a great start to the second half."

So you now have 26 points over Kopp in second.

"Yeah, I think it's 26 points, I mean it's nothing overly comfortable. If you have a bad race, you can wipe most of that way. Having at least a twenty-three point lead is good, that way you know that if you have a really bad day, the worst case scenario is you're still in the point lead. That's always good to have that kind of cushion."

Going into Peoria, what are your thoughts on Peoria 2003?

"Well, from the sound of things, it's the last year you can race a flat tracker, and we're coming loaded for bear with a flat tracker. We're hoping to end an era in a sense by winning the TT on a flat track bike."

If you were going to comment to the AMA on their proposed rule changes, what would you say?

"I understand the economic side of doing what they're doing, I just think that things could be accomplished a lot differently. It's proven that these motocross bikes are good on certain days, but on the majority of the days, they're not as good as flat track bikes. I had said years ago, when Formula USA started to do this production rule, that instead of just alienating all these people that kept flat track alive over the years - like the frame manufacturers: the C&J's, the Ron Woods, the J&Ms, the Circle Fs - all those people that have - not really made a living - but it's been part of their repertoire to be a part of flat track - I'd say make the frames and make them run stock plastic. Let's make flat track bikes look like motocross bikes instead of making motocross bikes look like flat track bikes, if that's what the goal is. I think they've gone about it the wrong way. I think we should be riding flat track motorcycles that look like motocrossers, not the other way around."