6/30/07

Lima Not Kind to Carr This Time Around

The first visit to a cushion track of 2007 was the half-mile event at Ohio's Allen County Fairgrounds, better known as Lima. The ever-changing, loose, pea-gravel surface always presents a big challenge for everybody, and this weekend was no different.

A four-time winner of the event, Chris hoped to make it five, but handling issues and a poor start in the main event relegated him to an eventual twelfth-place finish.

"Lima was pretty good to start with. We had some good laps in qualifying. I had a clean track every time out, so I didn't have to worry about roost or anything like that. I had the track in front of me and just kind of chased it as it changed throughout the sessions, then we were able to come up with a good qualifying lap. But you know burning one lap around there is a lot different than burning twenty-five, and I never felt comfortable even though we had a good qualifying time. I was never putting out consistent laps.

"So, despite the good qualifying effort, I wasn't all that confident going into the heat race, and that proved to be the case. I didn't get a great start and I just kind of stayed in fourth the whole time, didn't move forward, didn't move backward, just couldn't make up any ground on the guys in front of me and ended up having to go back to the pits and figure out what we needed to do to get the sucker in the main event and go from there.

"The semi came around, and a couple of guys broke before the race started, and that actually made my job a little bit easier. The two guys that were next to me were guys sitting on the sidelines, and they had been going good during the night, so I had a nice little three or four lap battle with that old Canuck Jon Cornwell, and he was riding really well, really smooth, like he'd never missed a beat, and it was fun riding with him. I was able to get by him about the third or fourth lap and stretch it out from that point. That was the most comfortable I'd felt all night long, was in the semi. For the life of me, I couldn't find that rhythm again in the main event.

"Got going in the main event and had a decent start from the third row, went up to about sixth or seventh, and kind of dropped back a position at a time from that point on, most of them in the first lap. Went into turn three, and one of the biggest problems I've had is with the rear end either coming around or it's pushing. I haven't been able to find a really good balance with the motorcycle the last couple of weeks, and it showed in my results, and I floundered around in twelfth. We chalk that up gonna go on to Joliet and going to try and make it better."

You're not in typical championship contention so far. What are you struggling with most this season?

" The change from twingles to straight up - we just haven't found a handling combination that works for us yet. We haven't been able to come up with a baseline that we're happy with. I was good on twingles for the last ten years or so, when they came back to flat track. They started to be the thing to ride while I was road racing and that's pretty much all I rode, with the exception of the miles, coming back. We just can't put our finger on it right now as far as getting it through the corner. So we're working on it making it go through the corner better. That's where we're struggling."


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