7/18/06

Struggles With Setup Slow Chris To Sixteenth

After racing last weekend in West Virginia, the flat trackers headed East to the 'other' Virginia for a new event at Virginia Motor Speedway, a clay half-mile located outside of Richmond.

Rain interrupted qualifying heats, forcing Chris to qualify on a different track condition than those before the delay, but the team adapted. Chris won his heat race over Ken Coolbeth and looked strong for the main event, but the changing track caught the team off guard and Carr faded to the back after twenty-five laps, finishing sixteenth with a motorcycle that wasn't suited to the conditions.

Another cushion track awaits the competitors in Greenville, Ohio this coming weekend, with Chris tied for the point lead in Twins with Bryan Smith.

"This weekend in Virginia started off pretty good. We were fairly good in qualifying, I think we were about twelfth fastest or something like that, on a track that was changing quite a bit. However, we did get rained out for our last qualifying round. They did get it in after the rain delay, but the track at that time was pretty wet and greasy, but was getting better with every lap. We didn't improve on our times from earlier on a drier track. We didn't expect to, but we were the only group to run on the new race track after the rain delay.

"That put us in the first heat race, so we knew what we were up against, and we had a great setup for the heat race. The track was a little thick in places, it was peeling up some of the clay and slinging it around, and we put in some of our best lap times of the day toward the end of the heat race, and we felt like we were prepared as we could be for the main event.

"Main event comes around, and that heat race setup went to pot in a hurry (laughs.) It wasn't very good at all. It was kind of frustrating, because there really wasn't anything we could do while we were on the track. Guys were marching by me right and left, and I proceeded to drop from third to sixteenth, and I was pretty much a sitting duck for just about anybody that came across me. It was one of those nights that we just chalk up to not making the necessary changes for the main event and go on to Greenville for a totally different animal."


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