If anything, Friday's provisional No. 1 run for Andrew Hines was a personal victory in that, provisionally, he was able to throw a monkey wrench into Matt Smith's plans for total domination of the NHRA Sonoma Nationals. 

Hines ran a 6.761, 201.67 in Friday's lone session to edge the defending series champion Smith's 6.769. Smith didn't come away empty-handed as he secured a 203.28 top speed, the third-fastest in the history of the class. 

Hines doesn't expect the run to hold through Saturday's remaining sessions, but feels it was good to get one up on his rival, at least for a day. 

"It's nice to knock him off the top," Hines admitted. "The funny thing is we ran each other last weekend in Denver in the semis, and he just flat out whooped me by a tenth of a second. And this is the same engine that was in my motorcycle last weekend. Usually, we have a Denver engine and I said, 'You know what, forget it I'm going to run the Denver engine in Sonoma."

"Same transmission, same everything. That shows you how far off base we were for our Denver tune-up. I must have gotten just too way over center trying to really stick it to him in the semi that I just took myself right out of the game with the tune-up. I was there with the reaction time, finally, last race and didn't get him. So it just shows that I thought it was hurt. 

"We came here and we looked at the engine and changed valve springs and everything looks fine. I said, 'heck, let's just run it." 

"So obviously picked up half a second from the mountain to here on that run and went from being a tenth behind him to a hundredth in front. He had the speed on me this round again, but he's got good power. Obviously he's working the horsepower to make the numbers come up on the mile-per-hour. So we're going to hopefully pick away at it. Right now I'm more focused on getting my V-twin in the top ten."

Missing the first two races of the season while the team prepared the new variation of the V-twin didn't do Hines any favors. He entered the weekend No. 11 in the point standings. 

"Just want to have a shot to get all three of our Mission Vance & Hines bikes into the countdown and then we can go from there," Hines added. 

Hines believes Saturday's Q-2 session will be the "one" for the Pro Stock Motorcycles. This is where he feels his provisional top spot will be challenged, although he felt Friday's night's run was living on borrowed time at the top.

"I didn't think it would hold up, no," Hines admitted. "This track's known for putting up big speeds and ET's. I felt when I popped the clutch, I'm like, "This thing's actually moving pretty good." 

"We have been really struggling hard in 60-foot here lately and I think that might have been actually tied for my best of the season. I felt like it laid down a good run, felt like it ran decent in high gear and obviously 201.6, our Vance & Hines Buell is running pretty strong. 

"But that .76, I didn't think would hold. Obviously the Smith camp, they got close with a 6.776 but hey, we'll take it. Right now we're just still in learning phase. Eddie and I have changed so many things on these motorcycles in the last two years since we've been to Sonoma that I think we kind of got lost and just moved off track. I literally took all my notes from two years ago, put them in the bike and it goes to the pole. So obviously I've been doing something wrong here, lately."