Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
This Cycle News Archives Column is reprinted from the January 30, 2008 issue. CN has hundreds of past Archives columns in our files, too many destined to be archives 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.
Carr’s First Big Road Race
What does Chris Carr remember about his AMA Pro Twins road-racing experience in Memphis in 1987? “I remember how hot it was and getting to race on the same track with Roger Reiman. I thought that was pretty cool,” he says.
Just two years earlier, Carr earned AMA Rookie of the Year honors in dirt track, and the Northern California native was already a title contender in the AMA Grand National Championship. His road-racing experience was limited to a couple of 250cc Grand Prix outings, nothing that would prepare him for racing the factory Harley-Davidson in the Pro Twins class (originally called Battle Of The Twins) road racer, on a beast of a bike, the XR-1000 dubbed “Lucifer’s Hammer.”
The ride for Carr came about when Harley Owners Group regular rider Gene Church was injured. Bob Conway, who was Harley-Davidson team manager at the time, told Carr they needed somebody on the bike at Memphis and offered to pay him a little extra to get him down there. Carr had no test sessions on the bike.
“It was ungodly hot at Memphis that weekend,” Carr said. “I think it was around 102 and it was a fairly new racetrack, so all the pavement was still dark black. With that air-cooled engine, it was so hot I got burns on my legs from riding that thing. Don [Tilley] did everything he could to keep the skin on my legs. He was building heat shields and everything, but it was just so hot, I got off the thing and felt like I was on fire.”
An unexpected bonus for Carr that day in Memphis was getting to race against one of his heroes—Roger Reiman. Reiman, the 1964 AMA Grand National Champion, was making somewhat of a low-key comeback. Just shy of 50 years old, Reiman was still competitive road racing on his old XR in the Battle Of The Twins, and while spectators didn’t know it at the time, they were looking at two Grand National Champions (Carr would win his first title five years later), separated by nearly 30 years, going head to head.
“I don’t remember everyone else I raced against that day,” Carr says, “but I do remember racing against Roger.”
Hoping on Lucifer’s Hammer at Memphis was an eye-opener for Carr.
“It was faster than any XR750 I’d ever raced, even to this day,” he said. “It was the fastest bike out there and a bit of a handful. There’s no doubt about it, it won the drag races that day—it just 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 weekend. It was pretty much a one-off deal.”
“That bike was fast,” Carr recalled. “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. Obviously, 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 Memphis. 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 pavement 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. “Especially 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 fondness. 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
Click here to read the Archives Column in the Cycle News Digital Edition Magazine.
Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues
