Andrew Hines will have a wonderful story to tell son Declan one of these days.
 
Declan joined brother Rion with his birth during the break between Hines’ victory at Denver and his No. 1 qualifying position at Brainerd.
 
“It’s a great way to bring our new baby boy into the world, winning the Denver race right before he’s born, qualifying No. 1 right after he’s born,” Hines said after recording his first top spot of the season but 27th of his career.
 
The Screamin’ Eagle Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson rider used a track-record 6.915 elapsed time to erase Hector Arana’s year-old 6.944. It also cemented his No. 1 spot, improving his own performance by six-hundredths of a second. He was the provisional No, 1 qualifier Friday.
 
But Saturday afternoon’s speed - an eye-opening 193.40 mph - woke up even Hines.

Andrew Hines will have a wonderful story to tell son Declan one of these days.
 
Declan joined brother Rion with his birth during the break between Hines’ victory at Denver and his No. 1 qualifying position at Brainerd.
 
“It’s a great way to bring our new baby boy into the world, winning the Denver race right before he’s born, qualifying No. 1 right after he’s born,” Hines said after recording his first top spot of the season but 27th of his career.
 
The Screamin’ Eagle Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson rider used a track-record 6.915 elapsed time to erase Hector Arana’s year-old 6.944. It also cemented his No. 1 spot, improving his own performance by six-hundredths of a second. He was the provisional No, 1 qualifier Friday.
 
But Saturday afternoon’s speed - an eye-opening 193.40 mph - woke up even Hines.
 
“That was a fast run. I didn’t think it’d be that quick,” he said. “But weather conditions didn’t really change much from the first round [Saturday]. We had less of a side wind, so that might have been the difference. Everybody picked up some.
 
“Matt Smith picked up pretty good, and he was right in front of me and when he was going down the track, I’m like, ’He’s going No. 1,’ “ Hines said. But he said he knew otherwise “as soon as I popped the clutch and felt my bike leave.”
 
Smith will start second Sunday.
 
“This is really good conditions for Brainerd - nice and dry out there today, way more dry than yesterday. Our V-Rod loves this kind of air.”
 
Some of Hines’ improvement comes from his Brownsburg, Ind., shop, too, he said.
 
“Luckily we’ve been able to find a little bit of performance over the last couple of weeks, tearing apart all our engines. We didn’t do any dyno work, but we knew what needed to happen. We had some things that were getting a little tight in the motor. We had to loosen those up a little bit,” he said.
 
“We never did change motors today, because the bike was running so well,” Hines said. “It’s probably the combination we want. We started off the weekend with the right one.”
 
He is scheduled to race favorite native son Buddy Robinson, of Princeton Minn., and his Suzuki in Sunday’s opening round of eliminations.
 
Hines said he hopes this momentum spills over into the Countdown races and the data the team has accumulated in the past couple of weeks should be helpful.
 
“I think we can push a lot of it into Indy. This is a big stepping stone for our Countdown this year,” he said, adding, “hopefully one of these V-Rods will win the championship this year.”
 
Krawiec qualified fourth and will meet Steve Johnson in the first round.
 
Hines said, “The engine combination in each bike is a little different. It looks like mine has worked a little better. So we’ll throw my spare motor into Eddie’s bike for tomorrow and send him down the track - hopefully it will be a rocket ship, just like mine.”
 
The bottom line for Hines is that he is back at the top of the order for the first time in 29 races.
 
“I don’t know when our last for the team was,” he said. It was Eddie Krawiec’s Dallas 2009 effort last Sept. 26. His own was last June 27 at Norwalk, Ohio.
 
“It’s nice to qualify No. 1. It’s been a long time,” Hines said, adding that 2004 and 2005 “were dream years, qualifying No. 1 eight and nine times. That was fun. It really means a lot to qualify No. 1, to see your name at the top of the sheet.”
 
Hines won just days before son Rion’s Aug. 24 birthdays in 2005 and 2006 at Memphis. Now he has a perfect story, too, for son Declan to brag about.