When Scotty Pollacheck earns his first Pro Stock Motorcycle victory, Eddie Krawiec just might be the first one to congratulate him. He’s still young enough that he can remember the first of his 45 and how it felt finally to be an NHRA winner.

But for now, for Sunday’s action at the Southern Nationals at Commerce, Ga., Krawiec had no mercy. He claimed his second triumph of the three bike-class appearances son far this season.

Krawiec also dismissed Melissa Surber, 2018 race winner L.E. Tonglet, and top qualifier Hector Arana Jr. on the way to his fourth Atlanta Dragway victory. He disappointed six-time runner-up Pollacheck, who traveled from Central Point, Ore., to challenge for his first victory in his first final-round appearance since the 2014 Reading race.

Krawiec’s winning quarter-mile elapsed time aboard the Vance & Hines Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson was 6.922 seconds at 194.91 mph. Pollacheck chased him at 6.958, 193.18 on the Extended Protection Suzuki but lost by approximately eight feet.

Krawiec earned the victory, despite the conditions.

“This track has been very challenging for us this weekend,” he said. “With the different track-prep procedures and all that that’s going on, we have to learn how it changes. And the reason why I say that is well, as more cars run on it, as more prep gets done as the weekend goes on, it gets better and better and better rather than being the best it can be right off the bat.

“But we almost gave it away there in the final. We did, last race, give it away – we think – in the final, when we sort of encountered the same problems with Andrew’s bike. We did the same thing there with mine, because we thought it was going to be good track under it. We underestimated the track. Track ended up being better. It stuck the tire and my bike rattled. Luckily enough it had enough momentum to get through there and go a .92 and get me the win light.

“It’s a challenge but even more so right now dealing with a crosswind. Whenever you’re in a crosswind situation, this track is one of those tracks that has a crown to it, so it wants to pull you left or right depending on which lane you’re in and what you have going on,” Krawiec said. “I really had a better bike than I showed Friday and Saturday, because I was not making the proper chassis adjustments to get the bike down though the track the best it could. After I learned a little bit and made a run . . . You give me enough time to figure it out, I’ll figure it out. I’ll get the right setup.”

Sunday’s victory put Krawiec within three of all-time class leader and teammate Andrew Hines.

But these two racers, who are competitive at everything from tiddlywinks to drag racing, aren’t worried about who wins the victories race, Krawiec said.  

“No, he’s the one that tunes my motorcycle. He puts literally the tune-up calls in it for what we’d like to say is our map, you know, for fuel and timing and all that. So he takes a pride when I run fast. He also takes a pride when he runs fast,” Krawiec said. “So we’ve kind of both overcome that as a racer. We focus on our main goal of we want to win, and it doesn’t matter who does it. When we do it, we want to win. I can’t thank him enough for that.

“So it shows you obviously the type of individual he is that when he goes out, the first thing he does is jump on the laptop and get on my motorcycle and starts looking and picking to see how much better he can make it in every little spot,” he said.

“It’s a little more difficult when you’re one person, that’s why it’s really the three of us, it’s Matt [Hines], Andrew, and myself that ultimately make the tune-up calls on these motorcycles, and we try to do our best with three heads. Sometimes three heads aren’t better than one. Sometimes one is better than three. But we’re all looking over each other’s shoulders saying, ‘Why don't you try this’ or ‘Why don't you nit-pick that?’ And we do a good job at that balance,” Krawiec said. “So I think as we continue to learn here, we’re only going to be better.”

Hector Arana Jr. was top qualifier with a 6.806-second, 198.76-mph performance that held up as best of the weekend. His father was the No. 2 qualifier. However, Krawiec said he wasn’t at all concerned to see that Arana Jr. had five-hundredths-of-a-second advantage in qualifying on the next-closest competitor.

“Well, the way I look at it is I’m the guy standing here with the Wally, so it shows you how much concern I had of it,” Krawiec said.

“You’ve got to win races. That’s what has to get it done. You can have the fastest car in qualifying or fastest bike in qualifying all day long, but you’ve got to get it done on race day. He has a fast motorcycle. There’s a lot people that have a fast motorcycle, but I need to stay focused on my camp to make sure I have a fast motorcycle. And the two crew guys being Matt and Andrew both of us all crew chiefing motorcycles and trying to do the best that we can, we need to stay focused. We have fast motorcycles. I don’t know if they’re that fast. I can tell you for sure we wouldn’t have ever run that fast today, especially in a head wind situation. But we’re standing here, got it done, and that’s the way that I look at it is you need to race and you need to race the track conditions that you have. They’re changing every lap, and it’s new to all of us and we’re learning. So I think the more runs we can make, the better off we are going to be.”

Pollacheck advanced to the final past Cory Reed, Hector Arana, and Reed’s Team Liberty mate Angelle Sampey.