KRAWIEC DOMINATES SONOMA WITH A CAPITAL D

There is domination and then there’s what the Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson Pro Stock Motorcycle team has accomplished thus far in the 2012 season. Of the six Pro Stock Bike races contested thus far, this team has won all six.

Two of those six events have been all Harley-Davidson finals.

With those kinds of stats, it’s awful hard to imagine someone other than a member of Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson team will be headed into Sunday’s final eliminations at the NHRA Sonoma Nationals in Sonoma, Ca.

From the time Eddie Krawiec rolled his V-Rod out of the trailer and hit the strip Friday afternoon, he has had no equal and the deficit wasn’t even close.

Krawiec heads into Sunday’s eliminations .047 of a second quicker than teammate Andrew Hines, the second quickest entry in four sessions. Both Krawiec’s 6.801 elapsed time and 198.35 mile per hour speed stand as track records at Sonoma.

Krawiec has designs of going even quicker on Saturday.

“I’m glad we got it done on the first lap [Friday] because we came out today [Saturday] a little too aggressive,” Krawiec explained. “We really shook because we were really trying to go fast. We had really good conditions and it was obviously fast. Overall, we had the best session of the weekend. We had a tailwind, everything we needed to go fast.

“Unfortunately we missed the tune-up a smidge and it really shook hard down-low … all through first gear and aggressively into second. We lost quite a bit of elapsed time and then the focus became about focusing on race day tune-up.”

Krawiec’s self-proclaimed “missed” run was a 6.886, 194.63, which was good enough for fourth in the sixteen-bike field.

Earlier this season, NHRA’s technical department assessed a 20-pound addition to the Harley-Davidson combination. This weight adjustment came into play during Saturday’s third session with the track temperature hitting 107-degrees.

“Our bikes, because they are heavier, are hard to get going when the track gets gooier,” said Krawiec. “We went from 1.05 60-foots; now we are high-to-mi 1.07s which is definitely not what we want. But, these are the conditions we will have. That’s what the weatherman is saying we will get. All we can do is pray for some cloud cover. Hopefully we can get more aggressive with our clutch tune-up. I think we have some good Harley-Davidsons headed into race day.”

History will prove Krawiec’s words to be accurate. He has won four races thus far this season having entered race day no lower than fifth. Hines has won three times.

“I think we have pretty awesome race day motorcycles.” Krawiec surmised.

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