Unfortunately for the rest, Chris - believe it or not - had never won at DuQuoin before. Breaking the dry spell with typical Carr determination, Chris took victory by an inch or two over rival Rich King Saturday night and departed 2005 with win number four. Look out to Carr's rivals for 2006, title number eight is already in progress.
"We went through practice, and we had some pretty competitive time. There were a couple of guys who ripped off a couple of phenomenal laps here and there. Unfortunately, I wasn't one of them, but we were doing some testing with a new engine combination on one of our bikes throughout practice, and even into the scratch heats. That just confirmed things, and we used it as a mini test session for us, By the time we lined up for our regular heat race, we were back on the bike that we had raced at Springfield, which we had run in one practice and felt real good with.
"Got going in the heat race, starting from the third row after switching bikes, and I ran down the leaders, which were (Rich) King and (Terry) Poovey by about lap four or so, and went at it with Rich King most of the way, and we were able to pull off the win on the last lap - a good indication of how well our bike was running, and we were pretty much set for the main event, we didn't make any changes at all.
"I got a good start, was up in the front pack, and things were going pretty good until Kevin (Atherton) went down - I guess lap six it was - and fortunately he's alright. He had a few bumps and bruises, but nothing major, from what I heard.
"So, we lined up for the single file, it was King leading, (Jay) Springsteen, myself, Bryan Smith, and I believe George Roeder was running fifth at the time. Got going, diced with the guys up at the front, went back and forth a while, and I kind of dropped back to fourth, as (Kenny) Coolbeth had made a charge up to the front and had got up into the front group. He was dicing in the front, Bryan Smith got in there for a while, I found myself in fifth for a little bit, then we got the five-lap-to-go sign, and I marched back toward the front, went at it with Springer and King toward the end, and then just Rich King on the last lap, he's the only one I saw on the last lap. He led down the backstretch, I took the lead going into three, and we were good enough to lead at the stripe and win by six inches. I think both those guys were close for second, King and Smith, Springer had dropped out on the last lap, and we got our first DuQuoin Mile win, something that was a great end of the year for us."
Did you learn anything about your 2006 program with the mini-test you did there?
"Duquoin, in the past has been on of the tracks where the twingles were really competitive on the mile, So, we were testing our version of a twingle with a different cam and a different setup, and we learned a lot from just riding on the track twice with that thing. We confirmed some thoughts after we had dynoed it, and we got to feel what it was like on the racetrack, so it was basically an opportunity to learn something from something different and move forward. "
What's your first plan for the off-season?
"I'm going to Belgium. I'm going there to run a Supermoto race in a couple of weeks and go play around in Mettet, Belgium, and KTM Europe is providing a 450 for us to run it what's called the Trace Superbikers. It's like the nineteenth annual event that they've had over there, and I went last year and rode it, it was a lot of fun, and I'm going back again."