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NHRA PRO STOCK SERIES "The fact that this is the first Suzuki win since 2011 shows that we've had a Buell epidemic; ac- tually a V-twin epidemic," John- son added. "Last year I got to the final here and lost to Junior [Hector Arana Jr.] and I felt like I should have won it. We've been close a few times, but we finally broke through. This time, Scotty was next to me and then I saw him disappear." Last winter, as part of an on- going effort to assure parity in the class, NHRA allowed Suzuki competitors the option to use bigger engines and Johnson was one of the first to take advantage of it. The V-twin bikes still domi- nated in qualifying, but Johnson managed to put his TL1000 into the number-seven spot with a solid 6.849 effort. Success in qualifying carried over onto race day where John- son rolled into his 12th career fi- nal round with wins against Katie Sullivan, Matt Smith, and Lucas Oil Buell's Hector Arana Jr. John- son caught a bit of a break when Sullivan and Smith both red- lighted, but he maintained con- sistency with a pair of 6.93-sec- ond runs. Against Arana Jr., the defending Gainesville champion, Johnson showed a marked im- provement with a 6.87 that domi- nated Arana's 6.90. "After the first two rounds I went to my engine builder [Vance & Hines] and said, 'Why is this thing such a pig?' I had tried do- ing everything that they told me, but it wasn't working so they told me to just keep going down that road [with the tune-up]," John- son said. "We ended up making a great run in the semis. "As for the new rules, NHRA wants to do something and they do the best they can. In theory it's a good rule and I'm happy. With the first Suzuki win in three years it would appear that they were right." After a sixth-place finish in VOL. 51 ISSUE 11 MARCH 18, 2014 P93 Briefly... Although they didn't win the race, Screamin' Eagle Harley-Davidson teammates Andrew Hines and Eddie Krawiec were more than pleased with the performance of their V-Rods. Both riders quali- fied well and made it to the second round. Hines was particularly im- pressive with a 6.81 that was good for the number-four spot in the field. "We spent a lot of time this winter working on our engine program and we made some big gains," Hines said. "We are much better off now than we were last year. We missed the tune-up a little on Sunday but we've got some serious power so I'm not at all concerned with the rest of the year. We'll be just fine." The 200-mph run that many had predicted never materialized largely because the tailwind that was pres- ent during set-up day on Thursday became a headwind for the rest of the weekend. As a result, the best speed of the event was turned in by low qualifier Star Racing's Michael Ray at 197.74 mph. After a disappointing test session where he said he claimed to have the "worst team on the property" Gainesville winner Steve Johnson was very pleased with his 6.84-sec- ond performance, which was made using the new Vance & Hines Su- zuki engine. "I ran a 6.82 here last year using my old engines so I was tempted to try that again but we need to just go ahead and use the new stuff because we know it's going to be better," said Johnson. Lucas Oil Buell's Hector Arana Sr. has a bike that is good enough to win races, but consistency has Veteran Steve Johnson won the seventh NHRA Pro Stock final of his career and ended a three-year winless drought for Suzuki in the process. continued on next page

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