Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128409
be more competitive than ever, thanks to a recent NHRA rules revision that allows Suzuki and Kawasaki four.qlinder bikes to have fuel injection and a maximum of 101 cubic inches (up from 92 in 2(05). Most insiders believe that the new rules should put the top Suzuki riders such as Sampey, Antron Brown, Craig Treble, and Geno Scali solidly in the six-second zone at most events, shifting the balance of power away from the V-twins which had the upper hand for the last two years. Which is hanIer; wirring a champi0n- drew Hines has accomplished so much in such a short time that it's easy to forget that he's just 22 years old. Hines, the son of Vance & Hines co-founder Byron Hines and the younger brother of three-time NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle Champion Matt Hines, earned his second-straight NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle Championship aboard the Screamin' Eagle VRod in 2005. He also etched his name in the history books as the first NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle rider to record a six-second elapsed time, with a 6.99 I-second run at the season-opening Gatornationals in Gainesville, Florida, last March. Hines also set the NHRA national record with a 6.968 run at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California, in July. Despite his impressive performances, Hines didn't win a race until midseason and finished vvith just two vvins in IS races. He didn't clinch the championship until the final race in Pomona, Califomia, where he held off his Screamin' Eagle teammate GT Tongtet, and former three-time NHRA champ Angelle Sampey, for the title. With their second title safely locked away, the Vance & Hines team has retreated to their race headquarters in Indianapolis to prepare for 2006, a season that promises to A 46 JANUARY 4,2006 • CYCLE NEWS ship or defending one? Definitely defending one. The first year, I had absolutely no pressure on me, because a Harley-Davidson had never won a championship before, and no matter where I finished, it was going to be the best finish in NHRA competition for a V-twin. After I won the championship in 2004, expectations changed, and the mentality of the team changed. It was important to everyone that we defend the tide. Thankfully, everybocly stepped up when we needed them to, and we found a way to get it done, but it was far from easy. You struggled for the first half of 2005. Were you worried that the championship might be slipping away? We had seven different vvinners in the first seven races, so nobocly could say they were dominant. I felt bad that I wasn't one of those seven vvinners, but at the same time, I never felt like we were so far behind in the points that I couldn't catch up. At that point, I wasn't thinking about the championship, I was just thinking that I needed to vvin a race because I hadn't won one since June of 2004. I got tired of answering the same question: "When are you going to win another race?" Then at midseason, I won in Sonoma and Memphis and was runner-up in Brainerd, and that sort of tumed things around. After those three races, I knew I had a good chance to win the title. At that point, it was just a matter of staying Any particular reason why you had such a slow start? Not really. The main problem was the lack of a cooperative effort between me and the bike. When the bike was fast, my reaction times were bad, and when I was riding well, the bike had "breakage" problems. I qualified first or second at 13 of IS races, so the bike was plenty quick, but we weren't as consistent as we needed to be on race day. We had an electrical problem that turned up from time to time, and it took us a while to find it. Once we got that out of the way, my results really started to improve. The Sonoma race was a really good example. I had the quickest bike be fIVE! or six hundredths, which is a lot, and we set the national record with a 6.96, which was just about a perfect pass. I'm not afraid to say that Sonoma was easily the best race of my career so far. Are you surprised at how far the Screamin' Eagle Harley-Davidson program has come in the last four years? I'm very surprised. It has been amazing to watch the development of this bike. Iwas there the first time we fired the engine, and the first time it ever went down the track. From day one, my dad knew he could make it work, but he also knew it would take time. I remember after the first test, he turned to Matt and I, and said, "What did I get myself into?" He got pretty stressed sometimes and had a lot of sleepless nights, but he never gave up. Whenever we had a problem, he'd work to get it fixed, and then we'd go test, and the bike would be quicker by five or six hundredths. We always knew we could get a V-twin to make enough power, but we didn't count on other things, like the lack of aerodynamics on the V-Rod body or the fact that this bike requires a whole different clutch setup than we were used to. Last year, GT and I had identical bikes for the first time, and we're the same weight, so we were able to take data from one bike and use it on the other. That helped accelerate our learning curve, and it helped us win a lot of rounds.