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Carr’s Crazy Combo-National Weekend
It was a hectic season for Chris Carr to begin with. The 1992 AMA Grand National Champion was given a shot to go from dirt to pavement and race for Harley-Davidson’s factory AMA Superbike effort. But Carr is a go-getter, and he was used to racing 25 or 30 races a year as a flat tracker and the AMA Superbike season consisted of only 10 race weekends. Seeing an opportunity to double dip, Carr made an arrangement with Harley that allowed him to race the Grand National flat track events on the off weekends from Superbike.
As the season progressed Carr was doing well enough on his flat track “off weekends” that he was doing decently in the Grand National point standings. His early season on the dirt was highlighted by a fourth place at the Daytona Short Track National, on a weekend where he was pulling double duty racing the Harley-Davidson VR1000 Superbike at Daytona International Speedway by day and switching over to night duty aboard his factory-backed Harley-Davidson XR600 at Daytona’s Municipal Stadium.
Things really began to change in Carr’s mind when he surprised series regulars and won the Memorial Day weekend Springfield Mile. Suddenly Carr was in the thick of the points chase on the flat track side.
The Mid-Ohio AMA Superbike race weekend was coming up. That was a conflicting weekend, so Carr hadn’t originally planned on racing the AMA Grand National Short Track in LaSalle, Illinois, that same weekend. But after his Springfield victory, Carr looked at the map and saw that Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and LaSalle Speedway were only about 360 miles apart as the crow flies, so maybe if everything clicked perfectly, he could run Superbike qualifying at Mid-Ohio, drive like a mad man to the Mansfield airport about 15 miles from the track and take a private plane to Peru, Illinois, one town over from LaSalle, get picked up by a friend and dash to the short track in time to try to qualify for the Grand National.
“My deal with Harley was it was kind of like a try-out year to see how well I did on the Superbike,” Carr said. “Superbike was the priority, but I was free to go race all the flat tracks that didn’t conflict. I think at that point of the year I was pretty much in contention for the [Grand National] Championship, and I knew down the road I was going to have to miss some races, but I had an opportunity to race both the Mid-Ohio and the LaSalle that weekend since they were only a little over 300 miles apart.
“I looked into getting on a puddle-jumper. So, after Superbike qualifying on Saturday, I went to a local airport and, because it was an hour earlier in Illinois, I was able to fly a little private prop-job into the town just to the west of LaSalle. I had somebody meet me there and the pilot came with me and watched the races.”
Carr was helped by the fact that a shower had moved through LaSalle earlier in the day and by the time he arrived from Mid-Ohio, the short track was still drying. A few fans were surprised to see Carr, but most in the pits knew Carr was going to try to be there.
“I think the word might have gotten around in the pits,” Carr said. “We had some friends helping. It was Kenny Barth who actually met me at the airport and dragged me out to the short track and then back to the airport right after the checkered flag. It was quite the 24 hours.”
Once racing started on the track it seemed no problem at all for Carr making the transition from racing a Superbike to a short tracker all in the same day. He won his heat race to easily qualify for the main. He then finished runner up to Will Davis in the Crane Cam Challenge, a money race for the six heat-race winners. And in the Grand National, he ran to a strong podium finish of third. The performance put him fourth in the Grand National Championship, only 12 points back to new series leader Scott Parker.
Directly from the podium another mad dash was underway. Carr’s trip back to Mid-Ohio.
“As soon as the checkered flag flew it was back to the airport,” Carr said. “And we even got a chance to buzz the track on the way out of town, which was kind of cool.
“That was the good part. Everything was going according to plan until we were flying back in. We were supposed to land at the Mansfield [Ohio] Airport, and it was socked in with fog. The pilot could not see the runway at all, even with lights on and everything. He tried twice to land in Mansfield, but he said, ‘Man I can’t do this.’ So, he ended up flying to the small airport in Columbus near Ohio State University.
“The pilot had a buddy who picked us up at the airport, so by the time I got back to my rental car at the Mansfield Airport I had just enough time to stop by my hotel, grab a shower and basically get back out to the racetrack. So it was a long, long night, let’s put it that way.
“I’d talked with Harley, and they approved me doing this as long as I could make my way back for the Superbike race. I made it back and was able to do morning warm-up and everything, but needless to say I probably wasn’t at 100 percent when I lined up for the Superbike race that day.”
Carr said the plane was too cramped and loud to really get any sleep on the way back. And then there was the tension of two aborted landings. The late-night to early-morning adventure and lack of sleep finally began to catch up with him. He raced to a 17th at Mid-Ohio, only a couple spots back from his Harley teammate Doug Chandler.
“It was one of those things where I had to try it. I wanted to stay in contention in the flat track points. It was a good thing I went because Parker ended up winning the race, and I was third or something like that. I would have lost a lot of points in the flat track championship had I not gone and done that. And I ended becoming the Superbike Rookie of the Year, which was neat for Harley.
“Mid-Ohio probably wasn’t my best track anyhow, but my results could have been a lot better had I not gone to Illinois the night before.”
When asked how expensive his combo weekend was, Carr said not as bad as you would think.
“I don’t remember exactly how much it was, but it wasn’t too bad,” he said. “And if I remember right, I ended up splitting it with Harley. The flat track was on me for the most part. They were giving me some support on the flat track side, but they were paying me to road race. It was the ’90s, and it was before they had all these private jet companies. It wasn’t a comfortable flight in either direction, and it wasn’t a big fancy plane. I wasn’t jet-setting, we’re talking a prop-job with maybe three seats in it for passengers and one of those was for a co-pilot. It was not that sweet of a plane.”
The Mid-Ohio/LaSalle Combo National weekend might have worked perfectly had it not been for the fog in Ohio on the return flight.
“I think it was an hour-and-a-half or so if you could get up and down, but I think on the way back we were in the air for almost four hours,” Carr remembers. “I give the pilot credit; he was a responsible pilot. He made sure his passengers landed safely.”
Did Carr consider doing any other combos the rest of the season? “Hell no!” was his resounding answer. “That one worked out only because they were in pretty close proximity. I think later in the year it would have been impossible to do anything like that and the cost would have been prohibitive. And after what we ran into during that trip, I didn’t look into it any further.”
In the end the season worked out great for Carr. He ended up a solid third in the final AMA Grand National Championship, only six points out of second, behind Scott Parker and Rich King. He won three nationals along the way. And, as he mentioned, he nailed down AMA Superbike Rookie of the Year. So, all things considered a highly productive season that happened to include one wild combo weekend. CN
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