Chris led the race early, lost the lead to Joe Kopp and then Johnny Murphree in the middle of the race, and then re-passed Kopp and was attacking Murphree when Kevin Atherton crashed and brought out a red flag. On the single file restart, Chris made a rare poor start and was unable to gain any ground in the short remainder of the race, finally taking fourth after 25 laps.
There are five crucial races left on the schedule, two of them this weekend at Springfield. Chris expects to defend his title from the front of the pack.
"We knew we had a little bit of work to do, we made a few adjustments to the bike and figured most of it was the rider, so I had a talk with him, and we went out for the main event prepared to do battle as best we could and things were going real good. Holeshot the main event, got going, and Kopp was pretty much on my heels the entire time until I made a bobble around lap 10 or so going into turn one. I hit a big rut and got up off the edge of the groove and he was able to run by me coming off of turn two and I believe (Johnny) Murphree went by me about the same time - or it might have been the next lap - so my rhythm was kind of broken. I settled back down, and up front, Murphree was able to get by Kopp going into turn one and I just put my head down, tried to do what I could do, and I ran Kopp down and got by him around lap sixteen or so and I ran down Murphree and tried making a pass on him going into turn three on lap seventeen or eighteen. I couldn't make that stick, and then the red flag cam out on lap twenty. We had kind of gapped Joe at that point. I think his tire had gone off and mine was starting to go off a little bit too. I think Murphree's was hooked up pretty good - he had the best tire of everybody all day long - they did the right thing on it.
"We lined up for the restart, and I proceeded to not get a very good start, made a little bobble early trying to run Johnny down, and Joe got by me and (Kenny) Coolbeth got by me at the same time, and I was stuck in fourth at that point. I couldn't really make any moves to get back by them at that point. We ended up fourth. That's the way it goes."
Are you looking forward to Springfield?
"I love racing two races in one weekend. I wish we did it every weekend to be honest with you. It's hard on the crew, though. They've got a lot of bikes to build this week, but we're ready to go. We're ready for the final march to the end of the year. We've got five races in about a three week period and we'll see how it works out."