6/30/06

Carr Forced to Suffer Lima Roost in Sixth Place Effort

The Lima half-mile oval is the home of the cushion-track specialists with its ever-changing, pea-gravel surface, and this past Saturday was no exception. Canadian Dominic Beaulac, renowned for his prowess on cushion tracks, took his first-ever AMA Grand National win during a red flag-interrupted event.

Chris came home in sixth, struggling somewhat with the track and the setup, but not unhappy with the results in the big picture of the Championship. The Ford Quality Checked team still leads the AMA Twins series by a healthy margin, although the real meat of the season is just now beginning. The series travels to Lake Odessa, Michigan this weekend at the clay half-mile at I-96 Speedway.

"It wasn't bad. It could have been better, but that's the way it goes sometimes. We were fortunate enough to get a good qualifying run. We were out on a freshly-groomed track, in the first group, and that certainly paid some dividends for us and got us a good starting spot for our heat race, and I proceeded to blow that (laughs) and got off the line about fourth or fifth. I worked my way into third and kind of struggled my way into the main event. Fortunately, from our good qualifying run, were able to work on the bike a little bit more and have a chance to test it out in the George Roeder Sr. Memorial Dash for Cash. We ran a fairly solid third in there. The cushion boys, Roeder and Beaulac, were going pretty fast, and I don't think I really had anything for them.

"We got the bike a little bit better and got going in the main event. I was running, oh, I don't know, sixth, seventh, eighth, right about there, for about eight or nine laps, then we had a red flag for Roeder going down. Things were going okay, I though maybe that a top six, top eight finish was going to be pretty good. Single file restart, I got a great restart and was running third for a few laps, then (Bryan) Smith went by me, and Nick Cummings went by me, and (J.R.) Schnabel came by me too - he was probably the fastest guy on the race track the last ten laps of the race. I ran kind of a lonely sixth from that point on. I kept Smith and Cummings in sight, but I really couldn't gain anything on them, and it was the worst spray I can ever remember at Lima. Of course, when you're running mid-pack, you're going to get a lot more of that than normal. It was a decent finish for us, not something that we're overly proud of, but nothing that we're disappointed with either. The important thing was that we extended our point lead in the Twins series, and we'll get onto these clay tracks in the next few weeks and see what happens."


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