3/14/07

Two Fifth Place Finishes at Bike Week Improve 2007 Title Hopes

After starting last year's AMA Singles Championship in a serious points hole by only taking three points home from the 2006 Daytona Doubleheader, almost anything was an improvement in 2007, and Chris came away with a much larger points haul, 28 in all, and sits fourth in the standings with the unusually long break before the Springfield TT in May.

This year's limestone short track at Municipal Stadium was two different characters - rough as a motocross on Wednesday night, smooth as glass on Thursday. Some insiders remarked that Wednesday's surface was easily the roughest ever seen at Bike Week. The crew worked on it and made it better for Thursday, smooth without a blue groove. In each scenario, Carr soldiered home in fifth, satisfied with a solid position in the championship.

Race 1

"We were met with a quickly deteriorating racetrack. In qualifying, we struggled a little bit the first two rounds, but we kind of got our act together for the last round of qualifying and we were able to jump from around thirtieth to ninth, I believe. The track was picking up speed so that worked out pretty good and we had a decent qualifying run. I think we ended up tenth actually, something like that. We ended up lining up in the fourth heat race or something like that.

"We had a track that was changing a lot. It turned into one of the roughest, if not the roughest Daytonas I've ever ridden. I kid you not, it felt like we were hitting twelve inch tall curbs out there at times. I got a decent start in our heat race and was running near the front. Jared Mees had kind of gotten out front early. I had just about a race-long battle with Jessie Janisch from Wisconsin. He was riding real aggressively and with the track being rough, we were all flopping around pretty good. You just hoped you didn't flop in the same direction that somebody else was flopping. Had a good last couple of laps and was able to get by him, and then he tried a slide job on me in turn three on the last lap, and I was able to counter that and square back underneath him and get a direct transfer into the main event, which was quite a relief, considering last year, on the first night, we didn't even make the main event. So, it was cool to get in the main event, even though we were on the second row, which isn't optimal at Daytona, especially with the way the track was.

"In the main event, I got a great start from the second row, actually moved up and was challenging for second place by the second lap, when - I think it was Sam Halbert - who hit the deck in turns three and four, so it kind of erased a really good start. Lined back up again for the restart, and got a pretty good start, not as good as the first one, but I stuck to the bottom of the track while it was smooth and was able to creep my way up into second after a while, then the low line kind of went away from me, and I was set up for that (low line) and I just kind slowly slipped my way back to fifth by the end of the race. I had a good battle with Johnny Murphree and Jared Mees on the last lap and kind of came out halfway through that one. They both went by me in one and two, and I was able to get back by Jared coming off of two and hold on to the position and end up fifth.

"I looked at it after the first night, I scored fourteen points, which was eleven better than the year before after two nights of racing. I felt pretty good about the evening. I would have loved to have been in better contention for the win, but the guys up front were going a lot better than we were, so fifth was definitely an improvement over 2006."

Race 2

"The track was a big improvement, although it was kind of weird in practice, it was like they just glossed it over from the night before. I t wasn't quite as rough as it was in the main event the night before, but it didn't like they put a whole lot of effort into the racetrack. It acted kind of different than it did on Wednesday night, and it seemed like the times got slower as the sessions went on, although it started to pick up just a little bit the last round. The night before the track got faster every time out as rubber was getting laid down, but as crappy as it was in qualifying, didn't take any rubber at all, so it was quite a bit of a different qualifying session than Wednesday. We ended up with a decent qualifying effort - nothing spectacular - in that we were fourteenth and I just chalked that up to the changing track conditions. We knew we were competitive and we would get a different racetrack at night and see what happens.

"We lined up - I believe we were in the second heat race of the evening - I got a decent start, moved my way to the front and proceeded to run my own race from that point on. The track was really, really smooth, I think it was one of the smoothest Daytonas that didn't groove up that I've ever been on, so it was pretty impressive - the turnaround - the work that they put into the track was certainly a lot better than the night before, but the downside was there wasn't whole lot of dirt to grab hold of out there, so we were pretty much riding around on a wet bar of soap at that point.

"Won the heat race, that got us a front row start, and I got an average start from the front row in the main event. I was up as high as third at one point and kind of floated in that spot. I had nothing for the kid up front, Mikey Rush, and (Kenny) Coolbeth got by me, and (Jake) Johnson got by me, and then late in the race, (J.R.) Schnabel got by me. Those guys were stuck to the ground, and it just goes to show that a full-on framer is the way to go around Daytona, whether the track is rough or not. We struggled just a little bit with our hybrid and couldn't quite make it work as good as the framers. We came out with another fifth, and overall 25 points better than where we were a year ago, so we're pretty pleased with where we sit at fourth in points and look forward to the rest of the series as those races unfold. "


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