KRAWIEC CONTINUES HARLEY'S DOMINATION

Eddie Krawiec continued Harley-Davidson’s domination of NHRA’s Pro Stock Motorcycle class Sunday.

Krawiec beat his Harley teammate Andrew Hines in the final round to capture the title at the Mile-High Nationals at Bandimere Speedway.

Krawiec clocked a 7.301-second lap, but was handed the win when Hines had a redlight start. Krawiec (four) and Hines (three) have combined to win all seven of NHRA’s Pro Stock Motorcycle national events this season.

“Talk about a dream season,” Krawiec said. “We never expected it to go like this. To be 100 percent honest with you this race should not have been ours this weekend. Not that you should always count yourself out, but we were a little down on ourselves as a team. We were struggling Friday and Saturday. Our bike with that little bit of extra weight up here definitely hurts it and kept it a little bit off pace. Obviously your weight to power ratio gets drastically decreased. We just dug hard and went after it.”

Krawiec, the reigning Pro Stock Motorcycle world champ, now has 15 career wins. Krawiec is first in the season point standings 44 in front of Hines.

“We were just trying to make really good runs, Andrew and I,” Krawiec said. “We wanted to be good on the tree and not leave much of a margin and if you do that and you have a good motorcycle under (you), you are going to get win lights. Win lights equal race wins and race wins get you Wallys.”

NHRA addressed the issue of parity in the Pro Stock Motorcycle class March 20 by increasing the minimum weight for the Harley Davidson 160-cid, 4-valve combination by 20 pounds, from 640 pounds to 660 pounds. That added weight, however, hasn’t slowed down the Harleys. Krawiec and Hines actually have combined to win nine races in a row, dating back to the fall race at Las Vegas in 2011.

“Obviously it doesn’t look like it because we are doing so well, but if you notice it did tighten up the pack since we got that (the added weight),” Krawiec said. “Like we said we are not going to cry and complain about it. We are going to take it and move forward. For us, we are making minimal mistakes right now. Andrew and I are both riding really well and our crew chief Matt (Hines, Andrew’s old brother) is doing an awesome job with the tune-up.”

Krawiec also believes he has improved his on-track performance.

“This year my goal was to try and be 30s and 20s (on the tree) on race day,” Krawiec said. “You can look at my stats probably over the last year and I can maybe count on one hand how many times I was double 0. I was double 0 twice this race. I had to go after it. There is good competition and when you are on your game out here everybody else is going to take a stab at it. Eventually we are going to be on the losing side of it and our Harley is not going to get the win light. We know that and we expect that. For right now, we are really enjoying it. This is just awesome.”

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