Eddie Krawiec scored a breakthrough for the Vance & Hines Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson team’s new Street Rod, dominating Pro Stock Motorcycle qualifying for the NHRA Mopar Mile-High Nationals.

It was less significant to Krawiec that he earned his second No. 1 start of the season and 35th overall. What mattered most to him this weekend at Bandimere Speedway was seeing the wholly new design perform the way team boss Matt Hines and the diligent crew had planned all along.

“Key thing for us, is the Street Rod going to the pole. We’re glad to be here,” Krawiec said.

It was a happy departure from the Harley-Davidson team’s showings in recent time trials. Krawiec and Hines debuted the Street Rod in early June at Englishtown, N.J. And at that race and the two following ones at Norwalk, Ohio, and Joliet, Ill., the normally dynamic duo could secure only mid-pack starting spots, at best. Hines qualified eighth, sixth, and 12th at those three events. Krawiec, who had ushered out the V-Rod era at Atlanta with a No. 1 start, could coax only a 10th, 13th, and 14th with the new Harley-Davidson.

“We’re out here learning,” Krawiec said, but he and his team taught the other Pro Stock Motorcycle competitors what it takes on the Morrison, Colo., quarter-mile. That it happened in the Denver suburb near where the Hines family made its home for many years before moving the shop to Brownsburg, Ind., made it that much more gratifying.  

Krawiec’s 7.178-second elapsed time from the lone bike-class session during a rain-plagued Friday – which was only .044 of a second shy of Andrew Hines’ track record – held up through two Saturday qualifying rounds.

As the leader of the only pro class this weekend with more than enough competitors to fill the field, Krawiec will meet local racer David Hope in the first round of Sunday’s eliminations.

The issue the Harley-Davidson racers have been negotiating centers on the chassis. “We’re not used to running something like the way we designed these bikes,” Krawiec said. “The reality is the old design was 15 years old. And we’ve been tuning from the last run and not for the next run. With the old bikes, we knew how to tune for the next run., so we’re always behind.”

The team tested last week at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis just a few miles from the shop, and Krawiec called it a “very successful” effort that “shed light on what direction we need to go.”

It’s that very track, that home track at Indianapolis, the Vance & Hines teams are eyeing. There is where the fields will be set and ordered for the six-race Countdown to the Championship, and Krawiec said the team deliberately timed the Street Rod premiere to allow for shakedown runs leading up to the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals this Labor Day weekend.

“Once you hit Indy, game on,” Krawiec said. “You’d better be right and have your stuff ready.”

It looked more than ready finally at this high-altitude track that offers no useful data at any other facility. But Krawiec said Friday he knew his bike still had some performance left in it, especially “down low,” or in the first 60 feet of the pass.

But Krawiec said he and his bike weren’t exactly on-point and joked that he appeared to try to give away the No. 1 status. ‘We missed it. We should have picked it up [Saturday]. But we’ll get our stuff turned around.

“We really underestimated the track,” he said after that late Friday first session. “For us, at Denver, there’s more track than we have power.  So we kind of struggle to get the clutch set-up right. It was kind of a crapshoot going after it [the No. 1 qualifying spot], and luckily for us, our Harley-Davidson Street Rod made it to the top. I couldn’t be any more proud of my whole team. We’ve been struggling since we debuted this bike at Englishtown. Andrew Hines and Matt Hines have been busting their butts to make sure we have the best stuff – all our guys have. It’s a big group effort.”

Krawiec said he’s hoping some of the fresh data will translate to next weekend’s visit to Sonoma, Calif., although he’s well aware the altitude change represents a wild swing. He said he’s eager to compete in the Mickey Thompson Pro Bike Battle at Sonoma Raceway.

Hines, the No. 6 qualifier, will race Angelle Sampey in the opening round of Sunday runoffs.  

Lance Bonham, who was in the field at a tentative 14th then dropped to the bump spot before the final session, missed the cut, along with Andie Rawlings.