KRAWIEC WINS ALL-HARLEY FINAL AT BRAINERD





The Pro Stock Motorcycle final at NHRA’s Lucas Oil Nationals Sunday was a celebration of the Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson team.

Eddie Krawiec and Andrew Hines met in the final round with Krawiec taking the victory at Brainerd (Minn.) International Raceway.

Krawiec clocked a 6.897-second elapsed time at 195.14 mph to defeat Hines’ 6.903-second lap at 193.99 mph.

“This (Brainerd) was the first place for an all-Harley final since I came on board back in 2007,” Krawiec said. “To come out here and do it again was awesome. Last time (in 2007), Andrew beat me in that all-Harley final and this time I got him. It’s about building momentum right now. Everybody is looking at points and honestly, we don’t car about points right at this second, we don’t care about any of that. We know where we are, we are in a great position. As long as you have that great drive going into the Countdown, you have that upbeat spirit, and everybody is excited. I have a good motorcycle under me. I know if it is not winning it is most likely because of me.”

Krawiec’s wins Sunday came over Ryan Oehler, Mark Paquette, Hector Arana Jr., and Hines. This was Krawiec’s 47th career Wally and fourth this season. Krawiec is now 30-20 against Hines in eliminations. Krawiec improved to 14-9 against Hines in final rounds.

“It’s just great to come out and run well,” Krawiec said. “Off the truck, we made a good hit and we had a very consistent motorcycle. I was going between 91 and 88, 89 pretty much all weekend long is what you need to win races. It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going or what you’re doing. You have to adapt to the changes and Andrew and Matt (Hines) were making awesome calls on my motorcycle to give me one that stayed in this incredible window. We tweaked on it for the final there. We both made our own little changes and man, my bike just liked it and ran well, and everything was good. So, I have no complaints.”

Krawiec is now 4-0 in final rounds this year and he also collected wins at Gainesville, Fla., Atlanta, and Norwalk, Ohio.

“I like that statistic,” Krawiec said. “Hopefully, I can keep adding to it and adding to the plus side. I feel very confident. I feel going into Denver and Sonoma (Calif.) I lost race wins. Competition is so great right now that if you slack off you’re going to leave the window open and the tighter you can close that window, the better off you’re going to be. Whoever is dancing on that edge of making the mistake and not making the mistake is who is going to win the championship.” 

Categories: