After taking a decisive victory in the most recent visit in 2005, Chris and his Ford Quality Checked Team couldn't get a handle on the conditions and were only able to salvage eighth place in the final. With some ideas on how to improve the motorcycle Chris and crew chief Kenny Tolbert hope to have better luck next weekend in Virginia.
"We had a good qualifying run and practice, I think I was fourth fastest again. I proceeded to get the worst start you could ever imagine in the heat race and was back in about sixth or so after the first lap and I worked my way up into fourth fairly quickly. I think it was Kevin Varnes running third, and I just chased and chased and chased, and I finally got close there at the end, and I just happened to have a really good turn three and four, and I was able to get inside of Kevin coming off of turn four and beat him to the line, and I just barely made it into the main event out of my heat race.
"From running pretty decent laps in practice to struggle that much in the heat race was pretty disappointing, but it was one of those things where my best laps of each session all day were about the same. I never really improved and never really got worse. I struggled to get in the final and was fortunate not to have to ride another semi, but, heck, in hindsight, it might have been a good thing to run a semi just to try and get a handle on things.
"Main event comes along, I get an average start, I think I was running about seventh or so, lost a position along the way to Shaun Russell, and pretty much raced by myself the whole race after he came by me on lap ten or so. He had put down some good laps running the bottom in his semi and he went forward, and I kind of stayed where I was at, and I ended up eighth. One of those boring races for me.
"So we're going to work on some things and bring a little bit different combination to Virginia Motor Speedway this weekend, and see if we can't get this thing to get through the middle of the corner better than we've been getting through it."