After enjoying a 26 point lead earlier in the season, Chris has seen the advantage shrink to a less comfortable margin as hard charging Coolbeth and Kopp inch their way back into contention. The gap is now nine points with just seven races left on the AMA schedule.
In addition to the seven races remaining in the title hunt, Chris plans to attend Sturgis Bike Week and race three events there, just to have some fun and enjoy the Sturgis Rally festivities.
"The one thing that happened all weekend was that I got great starts. I holeshot my scratch heat and won that pretty easily, holeshot my heat race, won that pretty easily, so we were feeling good going into the main event.
"Got a holeshot in the main event and proceeded to check out in the early part of it, and those guys were able to reel me back in during the last half of the race. It just seemed like we had a bike, that upon reflection, was good for about ten or twelve laps and would fall off from that point on, and those guys' bikes were real steady, and stayed consistent the whole race. It wasn't a matter of them going faster to catch me, it was a matter of me slowing down and backing up to them. All three of those guys clipped me the last seven laps and got on by. That's the way it goes. We have a pretty good idea of why it happened, and we'll do our best to make sure it doesn't happen again. "