Andrew Hines hasn’t been great as of late.

He hasn’t been bad either.

He has, by his own lofty standards, been floating somewhere in between as he chases down a sixth career Pro Stock Motorcycle championship.

But on Monday, Hines felt his team finally turned a corner as the veteran racer returned to the winner’s circle for the first time since Sonoma in July with a big win over Karen Stoffer.

“My motorcycle ran significantly better in the final today and it is really nice to see the win light come on,” Hines said. “We haven’t had a dry spell, it has just been that these last four races those White Alligator bikes have really turned that switch. Our guys deserve it. They work hard. We are not coming here and dominating these races. We find a way to pick away at the tuneup all weekend long and for us to record low e.t. and top speed in the final round, that is what we love.”

In a battle of the top two riders in the Countdown to the Championship standings, Hines blasted Stoffer on the tree and rode his Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson FXDR to a holeshot win at the rain-delayed NTK NHRA Carolina Nationals with a 6.805-second pass at 199.37 mph.

Stoffer, aboard her Big St. Charles/Skillman Auto Suzuki, crossed the stripe with a quicker 6.804 at 199.20 mph in her second-straight final.

“I really like seeing the win light come on, but I really enjoy crushing them. When we go out there and have three or four hundredths on them, that is what I enjoy because it is a reflection of how good our team is running,” Hines said. “We were in that position in the middle of the season. We were running pretty good where we had that advantage going into the final round. But with the way Karen’s bike has been running, she had four hundredths on me going into the final round. Karen waxed us in St. Louis and got her first win in a few years and we didn’t want that to happen again.

“I had my hand rolled back on the clutch lever trying to get everything I could. It is nice to earn them as a rider on a holeshot. I am not too proud of a 41 light in the final, but we still turned the win light on.”

With the win, Hines extends his lead in the Countdown to the Championship to 57 points over Stoffer. Hines’ Vance & Hines teammate Eddie Krawiec is third, 115 points back. Jerry Savoie and Hector Arana Jr. round out the top five.

Hines now has back-to-back finals after losing in the second round to open the Countdown.

“We were sitting around during that rainstorm yesterday talking about this Pro Stock Motorcycle class and how stacked it is right now,” Hines said. “If you look at the top 10 in qualifying order, any one of those people can be No. 1 at any given time. These races right now are hard fought, hard earned.”

Hines collected his eighth trophy of the season and the 56th of his career with wins over Michael Ray, Scotty Pollacheck and Hector Arana Jr.

After almost giving it away in the opening round thanks to a second guess of the track, Hines survived a perfect light by Pollacheck in round two in a close race - a 6.815 to a 6.855 - before watching Arana light the red bulb to advance Hines to his 11th final of the season.

“It was a tough day. The first run off the trailer we smoked the tire which was just a bad call on my part using the same batch of tires that smoked the tire in Chicago. That put me behind on tuning on my side of the team,” Hines said. “Luckily, having Angelle (Sampey) and Eddie (Krawiec) we got a lot of data coming back after every single qualifying session.

“We were picking at it and charging through eliminations today. This morning we came up and were studying the track and of course we made all of the wrong calls. Michael Ray, I’ve ran him the last couple of races and you never know what he is going to do on the starting line playing blocker for Matt Smith. We got by him and then had another Matt Smith bike in the next round with Scotty Pollacheck. Obviously Matt can put down some big speed with those bodies and the horsepower that he has.

“Then in the semis Hector is always tough, but I got a gimmie on that one. I saw that red bulb come on and I tried to think of what I could do to really focus on the motorcycle and get us ready for the final.”

Hines was especially proud of his win on Monday following a team reset following the team’s loss in St. Louis. Watching many of the other teams make up significant ground, Hines threw everything in the trash and started anew heading into this weekend’s race.

“Those White Alligator Suzukis have been fast these last few races and we have been trying to figure out where they are picking it up versus where we are losing it,” Hines said. “It just seemed like our motorcycle was untunable. When we would make the changes in the laptop we wouldn’t see the results on the racetrack.

“So we started brainstorming back at the shop with my brother, dad, and everybody on the team just trying to figure out what we can do different. We took that entire setup that had won all of those races earlier in the year and threw it out the window, parked those parts on the shelf, and said ‘hey, let’s try something new.’”

Hines continued his dominance at the Charlotte-area track as he takes a sizable points lead into the final three races of the season beginning next weekend in Dallas.

“When I first came here I almost hated it. It took me, like, four years to get out of the first round. Then I won a few races and it was like a love/hate relationship,” Hines said. “Since 2013, it has really turned the tables and I’ve been able to win a lot. Whatever it is, I can’t pinpoint it, we just seem to find a way to get up here with a yellow hat.”