9/9/07

Victory at the Springfield Mile

Labor Day weekend means it's Springfield time, and both races got off without a hitch in the weather this year. The short track on Saturday was typical Springfield short track, with much grooming of the soft surface. Chris turned a third row start into a respectable seventh with the patience and determination of a veteran.

On Sunday, Carr scored his first victory of 2007 with a calculating performance in the Springfield Mile. As always, the race came down to a last lap drafting and positioning battle, and Chris played it perfectly to edge Kenny Coolbeth and Bryan Smith at the checkers.

From Springfield, Chris jetted to Utah to participate in Motorcycle Speed Week at the Bonneville Salt Flats. The Fastest Man on Two Wheels didn't even turn a wheel, as salt conditions were not good enough to produce record-breaking times. For another year, Chris is still the King of the Salt.

Short Track

"The short track was pretty good, we qualified alright. I got a lousy start in my heat race, ended up a distant fourth, and found myself in the first semi. Fortunately, in the first semi, we had a pretty primo track. I got another horrible start there, got off the line fifth, but at least at that time you could pass on the track. I was able to get my way up to the front pretty quick, despite a red flag later in the race, I held on to the win and put that thing in the main event.

"Main event, a third row start, was just kind of average. I figured there'd be a lot more crashing than there was, and I figured I'd just take my time, try to move forward, expecting a red flag along the way. Unfortunately for me, we only had one. I restarted it tenth, and ended up seventh. There at the end, it was (Justin) Hittle and (Sam) Halbert going off the track on the last lap, and I went from ninth to seventh on the last lap, and that was about the best I could do with the track and the conditions the way they were."

Mile

"The Mile was real good. I was in the second practice group. We had good qualifying runs, I was at the top of the charts most of the time. I ended up with fast qualifier. That was good and it was bad. It was good in that we knew we were running pretty strong, the bad part was that the first heat race is typically slow and nowhere near what you get for a track in the main event. We got out front pretty early and split from the guys, had a pretty easy heat race.

"It put us on the front row, and I got the holeshot, first start, a couple of guys drafted by me, and I guess (Henry) Wiles got together with somebody and went down. So that brought out the red flag.

"Next start I was into the first corner second behind my old teammate Willie McCoy, pretty much drafted him down the backstretch and locked into a battle with (Kenny) Coolbeth and (Bryan) Smith and those are the only two guys I saw from that point on, and I just waited it out till the end, and I found myself in about the best position possible coming off of turn four, and was able to get by Coolbeth coming to the line.

"A quick Bonneville report - there's nothing to report. Nothing to report at all. I didn't even suit up. The salt conditions were bad for us. There were a lot of guys spinning and stuff, and it wasn't conducive to really fast times, so we called it a week."


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