7/17/06

Fifth Place With Only One Cylinder

The AMA Flat Track Series returned to West Virginia for the first time in five years, visiting the clay half-mile outside of Mineral Wells for another Twins Series event. Chris and the Ford Quality Checked Team dominated most of the evening and were comfortably leading the final until the final lap, when one of the two carburetors popped off the XR750 intake, instantly converting it into a 375cc single. Somehow Chris managed to limp around with enough speed to hold onto fifth place and maintain his points lead in the Series.

The riders travel to a new facility in neighboring Virginia for the next race, another half-mile, and another Twins event.

"We can sit here and beat ourselves up over what happened all we want, but you know what? I look at it this way - I broke and got fifth, and there ain't too many people that can say that. So we're looking at this in a positive light. We felt like we controlled the race. We were capable of winning, Chris Carr was doing his deal, and the Kenny Tolbert bike did it's deal for 24 laps, and that's the way it goes sometimes. You know, if you look back at the track record over the years, it's pretty damn good, so I'm not going to sit here and beat him up, I'm not going to beat myself up, we know we're on the right track, and we're going to go to the other Virginia this week and try to make up for it.

"We qualified well, we felt good in qualifying. One particular bike was better than the other by about three tenths, and we verified that in the last session. In the last round, we were the fastest guy of that round, and ended up being second overall in qualifying to (Kenny) Coolbeth. So we were on the right track, we felt good with the setup, we weren't changing things up on it at all. In fact, I don't think we made a chassis adjustment or a gearing adjustment all night. We unloaded it out of the truck ,and we didn't do a darn thing to it but pour gas in it.

"We got going in our heat race, got a decent start, battled with Shawn Clark for a couple of laps, and I got by him and got a little bit clear, went out and marched off some of my best, most consistent laps of the day, felt real good about the heat race, and it was good enough to put us on the pole for the main event.

"The first start of the main event was kind of interesting. I got a decent start to the corner, but three guys banzaied below me or around me, how ever - I came out of turn two about fourth behind (Jared) Mees, Clark and Coolbeth. Went into turn three and Mees hit one of these ruts and about pitched it away, Clark hit a rut and about pitched it away, and Coolbeth went in there real smooth and just slid out right in front of me. I had to take a little evasive action and just missed him, going around the outside of him, between him and the hay bales, and the red flag came out for that. So one of my main competitors had a lot of catching up to do.

"On the restart, I took off, got the holeshot this time, Clark got underneath me, and I got right back by him coming off of two, and was going pretty good, just trying to get feel for the racetrack, and then about lap four, (Mike) Hacker got by me going down the back chute. He was really getting good drives coming off of turn two, and I followed him around for about five or six laps, and along the way a hay bale kind of came out on the racetrack going into one, and I got a run off of turn four on him about lap nine, and we were having to alter our lines a little bit because of the hay bale that was lying on the racetrack, and I just used it as a moving pick going into the corner - he had to back out of it - and I retook the point and was doing my thing at that point, going real good, starting to put some time on him. He stayed with me for about ten laps, then I got the five lap sign and took a peek back and saw that I had him by about ten bike lengths, and I just kind of put my head down, then the red light flipped on about lap 22 with George Roeder going down between turns three and four, so I felt good going into the five-lap dash. Whenever we have a red flag inside of five laps (to go), it's a five lap race from that point on, and I felt comfortable with our setup and we did the new staggered restart. I got a good start there and held the point and put about five bike lengths or so on Hacker, and I had it steady, felt like I had it in hand, then coming off turn four for the white flag on the front stretch, the thing started wheezing down on one cylinder because the carburetor was coming off. I kind of got my leg squeezed in there to try and hold the carburetor at the hole so I could still have power, and that worked for about, oh, a couple hundred yards, until we hit the corner and the thing dislodged itself. I was pretty much riding a 375 from that point on. I held the thing as wide open as I could through the corners and somehow managed a fifth out of that whole deal, just narrowly beating Shaun Russell to the line. That's the way it goes."

Maybe they'll give you some Singles points for that.

"(Laughs) I hope they give me some Singles points for that. I need that."

How did the testing at Bonneville go?

"Testing at Bonneville went really good this week. I got the thing into third gear on Wednesday morning and went 199 miles and hour, then later on that afternoon, we got it into fourth gear and did 243. I was looking for more speed, but the bike was detuned a bit from race trim, and I took it as fast as it would go, and we're happy about that. We test again in a couple of weeks, and we'll go throw that dart again."


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