my head down and go. I looked back
one time when he was starting to get
away and thought, 'Wow, there is a
freight train behind me coming pretty
quick.' I just stayed calm and never
looked back from there."
The leaders pulled well clear of a
great race for third among Hacker,
Mees and King.
"I got off the line and I noticed that I
was keeping pace with Coolbeth and
Carr, but they were a little ways ahead
of me," said Hacker. "It seemed like the
harder I rode, the farther they went."
Coolbeth took a couple of shots at
Carr but could never quite get along-
side. By lap 10, the battle for third was
between just Hacker and King; King
was on the low line and Hacker on the
high, with King pulling even and inching
ahead a couple of times, but a couple of
mistakes by King sealed his fate.
"I could get on Mike; then I'd make a
mistake and I'd drop back," King said.
"Then I'd catch him and make a mis-
take and drop back. I just didn't quite
have enough to get by him. It was
tough for me to pass. This track was
such a momentum track - you just
couldn't make any bobbles or get too
sideways. That's just what I did."
By this time, Carr was on cruise con-
trol.
"I felt pressure from him [Coolbeth]
towards the end," said Carr. "I had a
really good last five laps. He caught me
in the middle of the race and I got
away. I kind of played around with a
couple of lines, and he caught back up.
I determined that he was making up
time running low, especially in three
and four. So I just made a point of plug-
ging up that part of the racetrack. I was
still able to do some good lap times
down there. I just had to ride the track
a little bit differently. I figured if he's
going to pass me, he's going to go
around me on the outside. That's a
hard thing to do here with a groove
that wide and that slippery. I was going
to make him work for it, to go around
the outside; I never saw him up there.
We had a real good lap 23 and 24 to
get a little gap for the last lap."
C Y C L E N E W S • AUGUST 9, 2006
31
(Top and above) Rich King (80) diced with both Mike
Hacker (67) and J.R. Schnabel (33) en route to fin-
ishing fourth in the National. Hacker ended up third
with Schnabel sixth.
(Right) Bryan Smith rode to a seventh-place finish
on his Harley.
