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Cycle News 2021 Issue 48 November 30

Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles

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VOLUME 58 ISSUE 48 NOVEMBER 30, 2021 P113 didn't win the road races. I don't remember touching my knee down, but I did wear my boots down pretty thin. "I didn't go there with the mind- set that I was going to beat those guys. I just wanted to get through the weekend safe so I could get back to dirt track the next week- end. It was pretty much a one-off deal." "That bike was fast," Carr re- called. "I qualified on the second row and led going into turn one, and then about four guys went by me. On the second lap, I blew by everybody again on the front straightaway, and they all got past me again in the first corner. Obvi- ously, they were better riders than I was at the time. I was young and not into road racing." Carr did lead the Memphis Pro Twins briefly on laps one and two, but vastly more experienced riders—such as Jimmy Adamo, John Long (both on Ducatis); Doug Brauneck, on the Dr. John Moto-Guzzi; and Britt Turkington, on "Lurch," a Yamaha XV920, which was made famous with Kevin Schwantz racing it in the Superbike class a few years earlier—finally overcame the brute horsepower of the big Harley. Adamo won the race in Mem- phis. Brauneck finished third, (behind Long) and would go on to win the 1987 Pro Twins title. Carr finished fifth, ahead of Dave Keiffer, Kurt Liebmann and Carr's hero, Reiman, who was eighth. Tilley laughs when he recalls the combination of a very light Chris Carr on his very fast XR- 1000. He remembers the race exactly as Chris does. "Carr was so small, he'd blow by everybody down that long straight at Memphis," Tilley said. "But he didn't have much pave- ment experience, and they all got back by him in the turns." Tilley was Carr's only coach during the Memphis weekend. "I think I left Memphis with my head high," Carr said after his respectable finish. "Espe- cially with my limited road-racing background. I made it through the weekend without hitting the deck and that was important to me. The fastest turn at Memphis was the first turn—a big right-hander. Had it been a left-hand turn, I might have been better off." The racetrack itself, Memphis International Motorsports Park, was one that the pro road racers wouldn't even think about running today. The 1.8-mile course had a tremendously long front straight, which also doubled as a drag strip. Then it made a couple of fast right-hand turns, a few tight esses and then back underneath a narrow, guardrail-lined corridor that ran under a pedestrian tunnel and back onto the front straight. The extreme temperatures kept the crowd low that weekend, and the AMA never returned to the facility. Carr went on to win the AMA Grand National Championship in 1992 before coming back to road racing as part of the factory Harley- Davidson Superbike effort in 1995 and '96. His biggest claim to fame on the underpowered Harley- Davidson VR1000 Superbike was winning the pole at the Pomona Superbike race in 1996. It was the only time the VR sat on the pole in an AMA Superbike race. Carr looks back at his early foray into road racing with fond- ness. He enjoyed working with Tilley and getting the opportunity to race Reiman, and he can tell his grandkids someday that he once rode the infamous Lucifer's Hammer. CN This Archives edition is reprinted from the January 30, 2008, issue of Cycle News. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be ar- chives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives "I think I left Memphis with my head high. Especially with my limited road-racing background. I made it through the weekend without hitting the deck and that was important to me."

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