It was hard to imagine things could get better for Andrew Hines at the U.S. Nationals, but they did Saturday.

A day after taking the provisional pole, Hines rode his Screamin’ Eagle Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson to a national record time of a 6.815-seconds at 195.17 mph. The speed was a new track record at Indy.

“I didn’t know what to expect,“ Hines said. “I saw Eddie (Krawiec) (his teammate) go an 86 out there and I saw his speed 194.94 and I thought we had made the right tune up call on that one. My bike went 195 mph on that run and it was just a tick better at 60 feet and that’s how we got that time. We got it to the eighth-mile at 162 mph and you do not usually see that here at Indy because the altitude of this track. But, the air just got really dry and that’s what the motorcycles love.”

It was hard to imagine things could get better for Andrew Hines at the U.S. Nationals, but they did Saturday.

A day after taking the provisional pole, Hines rode his Screamin’ Eagle Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson to a national record time of a 6.815-seconds at 195.17 mph. The speed was a new track record at Indy.

“I didn’t know what to expect,“ Hines said. “I saw Eddie (Krawiec) (his teammate) go an 86 out there and I saw his speed 194.94 and I thought we had made the right tune up call on that one. My bike went 195 mph on that run and it was just a tick better at 60 feet and that’s how we got that time. We got it to the eighth-mile at 162 mph and you do not usually see that here at Indy because the altitude of this track. But, the air just got really dry and that’s what the motorcycles love.”

For setting the national record, Hines received 20 bonus points. Krawiec’s 6.867 effort left him second on the qualifying ladder.

“Twenty points is huge when you only have a 30-point lead coming in with the way this Countdown works,” said Hines, who finished the regular season atop the point chase. “We’re hitting our stride at the right time. We had a little bit of good luck in Sonoma even though we didn’t have a decent motorcycle. Then, in Denver we probably didn’t have the motorcycle to win that day, but we were consistent enough to get by everybody and we have been on a roll ever since.”

Hines, a three-time world champion Pro Stock Motorcycle rider from 2004-2006, overtook Hector Arana for the points lead with his hot streak.

“When we went to Brainerd and we figured we had nothing to lose, so we were just going to try a bunch of stuff,” Hines said. “We put together six engines with three different combinations, so each of us ( he and Krawiec) had a spare. Then, we figured out which one worked the best, and left that motor in my bike all weekend long. That’s the same motor I ran in testing last week and the same motor I’m running here. It is just happy right now and hopefully nothing will go wrong with it.”

Although Hines has captured world titles, the U.S. Nationals crown has eluded him. Hines was runner-up at the 2008 U.S. Nationals to Steve Johnson.

“There’s always a chance that you get a motor failure on Monday, and if it happens, it happens,” Hines said. “Our V-Rods have been very reliable lately and I do not want to say it, but I can’t remember the last time I hurt a motor. I have not had a bike this good in a long time.”

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