Thinking his slim advantage was shrinking even more mid-race as he circulated in ninth with Murphree in second, Carr bore down and found a good racing line, moved up slowly but surely and passed several riders late in the race. One of those riders turned out to be Murphree, who ended up seventh, two places behind Chris. It wasn't pretty, but he got the job done.
"We started the night pretty decent and won our scratch heat, and had run some of the fastest times throughout practice but it was one of those things where we were out in the first practice every time on a fresh track. We line up for our scratch heat, and it's the fifth out of sixth, so the track's totally different. We got an average start and had to work our way to the front, but we were able to win that one.
"In the heat race, it was the third heat race, and the track had started to dry out a bit - despite them grooming it between every race, it still changed quite a bit. We started struggling a little bit. We were leading our heat race most of the way, and Johnny (Murphree) got by me running a real good high line that really only one person could run. The only way to go by him was on the outside, and there wasn't any racetrack left that time of the night. He had a good run in the heat race, and was dialed in, passed us on lap seven of ten, and marched away from there.
"We lined up for the main event and I had first pick on the second row, but George Roeder elected to start on the outside second row, which allowed me to basically move up one row, because I had decided to pick the inside second row. I got a fair jump to the first corner. I was kind of pinned to the bottom, but that's kind of the way I wanted to go - for the first corner anyhow - and I came out of turn two about fourth or fifth. I started to march backwards, getting roosted by the guys in front of me, and not really able to find a clean line. I faded back to about ninth or tenth within the first eight or nine laps of the race. (Kenny) Coolbeth was flat hauling ass! I was running ninth, and he passed me about lap six or seven and just checked out, and he was in a different zip code when the race was over.
"I just went down to the bottom of the track - I had seen during the semis that they had started to lay a little bit of rubber down there - so I decided to go lay a little more rubber down and see if I could get a line to come in. Fortunately for me, a line did come in. As the race wore on, some of the guys were probably do the same thing. I wasn't fast enough to beat the guys up front, but my lap times stayed fairly steady the whole race and they didn't fall off near as much as others. I got going, moved up and was running sixth and saw that I was catching Murphree. Earlier in the race, he was running real strong up front, and I was about a straightaway behind him. I just kept clawing away, clawing away, and the last lap I was on his fender coming off of turn two, and I was able to draft by him down the back straightaway going into turn three, and Roeder and Jake Johnson were apparently nipping on my heels at the same time, and they both went around us on the outside, and the last half a lap was pretty exciting - there was four of us going for fifth place. Roeder had successfully gone in front of me coming off of turn four and got down on the brushed off part of the straightaway, and because of the moisture and the dew and everything, he lit it up a little bit, and I kind of turned left and got down in the fluffy stuff and beat him to the line, and we displaced Murphree from fifth to seventh all in the matter of a half a lap. As far as the championship chase is concerned, it was a good night, and we've got two weeks to get ready for Columbus."