Chris Carr put in a typical, gritty Chris Carr performance at the Labor Day Springfield Doubleheader this past weekend to cap off another impressive run to his fifth consecutive and seventh overall AMA Grand National Championship. The record books will show Chris winning at least three races (there's still one left) in 2005, but what it likely won't show is how, after almost being literally knocked out of Saturday night's short track trying to avoid a crash in front of him, Chris was able not only to return to the race, but to make passes on a difficult track on which to pass and move up eight places in eighteen laps and stretch his points lead over Kenny Coolbeth. That's the Chris Carr that so many fans admire and respect.Sunday's mile race was possibly a bit unusual for a Springfield Mile, but the result was not - Chris took the win with sound strategy throughout the race and what turned out to be a perfect decision in that all-important last corner. In doing so, he clinched the tile, but respectfully wished that rival Coolbeth could have put up more of a fight. Coolbeth's XR750 broke on lap ten while leading the race.
In the end, Chris took win number 71, Springfield Mile win number eleven, and title number seven. One race remains - the DuQuoin Mile - on October 1.
"Scratch heat, I got off the line about fourth, worked my way up to second behind Steve Murray, and couldn't make a pass at all without breaking his leg, so I settled for second. I lined up in the third heat race, and I didn't get a very good start. One of my problems all night long was getting good starts, and in short track racing, if that's an issue, you're in trouble. I got off the line about sixth, kind of worked my way up into third, and ran down the leaders. I couldn't really do anything with them, then we had a red flag, and on the restart, I ended up finishing third behind Joe Kopp and Kevin Varnes, so I was headed for the semi.
"The semi comes around, and I got off the line second behind A.J. Eslick. I worked on him for about four laps and was able to make the pass going into turn one just after the halfway point and was able to go on from there and secure the victory and my spot into the feature race, which was all important. The lap times we ran in the last half of that semi were pretty competitive with some of the lap times that guys who had been winning heat races earlier - guys like (J.R.) Schnabel, who had been sitting on the pole - were doing. So we felt confident that if we could work our way through traffic, that the track would come to us and things would go good.
"Main event comes around, and starting from the third row on any short track is never a good thing. I got going, got a decent run the first couple of laps, was running in eighth or ninth place, and around lap seven I came into turn one, and I'm dogging Bryan Bigelow, and he's dogging Henry Wiles, and Henry gets it sideways in front of us, and Bryan basically lowsides to keep from highsiding off the back of him, and I was committed to a wider line, and Bryan's bike came out and clipped me and the last thing I remember I was flying through the air. I do not remember hitting the ground, I don't remember that they had to lift the bike off me, and I don't remember that I had to lay there for about thirty seconds before I came to.
"I woke up, and immediately, as I regained consciousness, I remembered what happened, I was just a little bit dizzy. I proceeded to get to my feet, and I stood there like a drunken idiot for a minute of so, and I proceeded to walk it off. My wife and Kenny Tolbert were looking at me to see if I was alright, and I finally looked over at Kenny and asked if he was going to get the bike fixed or not. He started running over to the work area and started to prepare the bike, and I shook the cobwebs out of my brains, and everything was good to go at that point. We had another single file restart - for what seems like the umpteenth time in the last couple of weeks - lined up thirteenth, and in the first lap of that one, we had Shaun Russell go down, and Bryan Bigelow, so I lined back up again, I think twelfth or something like that.
"We went uninterrupted from that point, and like I said, the track was starting to come to me and I just started picking guys off one at a time, and before it was all said and done, I was sitting in fourth closing in on third, and the checkered flag came out. In the process, I passed Kenny Coolbeth, who had been running fourth at the red flag, and I was able to get by him, and I was able to stretch my point lead, as he had faded to eighth place. We turned chicken shit into chicken salad, basically, and all in the matter of about eighteen laps. So that was a good night in the end for us."
"The first seven or eight laps were atypical of Springfield, in that Kenny Coolbeth had made a break from about the first lap and proceeded to stretch, I'd say, about a twenty bike length gap on the next group. I was in that group. I got myself up into second and got Kenny in my sights - probably on about lap four. I was content to sit there for a while. I didn't really want to be the rabbit to chase him down, I didn't want to overcook my tire, I just wanted to maintain the gap and not let it get any bigger, and I was able to do that for the next three or four laps.
"Rich King came by me and I got in behind Rich. Rich proceeded to eat into Kenny's lead. Coming around turn four on about lap ten, we had narrowed the gap to around fine bike lengths behind Kenny, and he ended up popping a chain coming off turn four, which was an unfortunate thing for him. I think everyone in the stands would have loved to see the race go down to the wire with him included. I feel bad for him, but that's an unfortunate aspect of racing - we can't control everything.
"From that point on, it proceeded to be a five-rider dogfight at the front between Rich King, Shaun Russell, my Ford Quality Checked Certified Pre-Owned teammate Willie McCoy, and Joe Kopp and myself. We went at it the last fifteen laps. I had made a little mini-break along the way for a couple of laps and turned out some pretty good laps in the 33.9 range, which is lightning fast for the middle of a race on a mile track, especially Springfield. We went back and forth at it for a while. We got down to the white flag, Shaun Russell leading at the stripe and going into turn one I was second, giving him a little bit of a gap, and King comes up beside me and fills the gap. So they're one and two, it's Russell, King, and myself. I don't know where Willie and Joe were, their positions at the time.
"We come off of turn two, and Shaun decides to run a lower line down the back straightaway in defense of his position. King goes with him and drafts to the inside, I go with him, draft up to the back of Shaun and go to the outside and King takes the lead going into turn three. I let my momentum carry me around the outside of Shaun, so we kind of sandwiched him in a sense, and I held it on a little longer and filled the gap between Rich and Shaun.
"So were going between turns three and four going to the stripe, and King proceeds to light it up badly coming off of turn four. Fortunately for me, I wasn't right on his tail when it happened. It looked like he may have lowsided the thing at one time. I kept my momentum going instead of trying to draft him to the line at a slower acceleration rate, I just let my momentum carry me up to the wall and I figured if they're going to draft me at the line, they're going to have to go up to the wall and catch the pocket of air. I guess Shaun made the choice to chase down to Rich on the inside, and nobody really challenged me at the line and Shaun was able to get by King for second. That was another dandy of a Springfield mile in the history books."
This is you seventh title and you fifth in a row. What's most special about this championship?
"We went through a couple of testing times, and we performed very well as a team. This Championship is not because of my talents, it because I have a great team assembled. Kenny Tolbert is a very big part of all the Championships that I've won. I don't think I would have accomplished what I have if it weren't for his expertise. We went through a streak of half-miles where the other guys chipped away at me hard, and despite the fact that we weren't capable of winning a bunch of those races, we had some very good finishes when it could have been very bad. I think that, in and of itself, shows that the hard work these guys do week in and week out pays off A bad day (for us) under normal circumstances is a fourth place finish. That's a testament to their abilities as well as mine. I think that was the difference.
"If you look back at the last couple of weeks, with what happened at Sedalia - going for the win and going down - taking a big knock on the jaw on that one. That was a tough pill for us to swallow but we were able to bounce back. Through adversity on Saturday night we were able to still gain points on what could have potentially been a disaster for the Championship chase from our standpoint. Certainly, the job that we were able to do on Sunday was the difference in winning the Championship, in my opinion."