Cycle News

tedly struggled to adjust to the pre- mium conditions that were present in Reading, but managed to find the right combination for Sunday's final elimina- tions. Krawiec was not only fast in elimi- nations with four of the five best runs, he was also extremely consistent with three-straight 6.80 runs in his wins over Shawn Gann, Adam Arana, and reigning World Champion Matt Smith, who red-lighted by .007 of a second. "I've had a great bike pretty much for the whole season, and we came here and struggled a little with mine, getting it off the starting line," Krawiec said. "When the track is really tight like this, it makes it hard to get the vehicle moving and get the [wheel] speed, as we call it. My crew chief, Matt Hines, does an awesome job, and you give him enough runs and he'll keep refin- ing it and making it better and better, and that's what we're doing. For my motorcycle, it just had a little bit of a trouble area getting down the first 60- feet of the track. From there on, it ran VOL. 51 ISSUE 40 OCTOBER 7, 2014 P91 Briefly... Lucas Oil Buell's Hector Arana Jr. ended, at least temporarily, the Harley domination at the top of the Pro Stock Motorcycle quali- fying charts with a 6.796-second run at over 197-mph to claim the Reading pole. "We were fighting to get the setup right all weekend and just couldn't get it figured out," Arana Jr. said. "We threw a Hail Mary setup at it for the last session thinking that we really had nothing to lose. It went right down the track all the way to the number-one spot. I was shocked. There were other bikes behind us that could potentially go faster. I was just holding my breath hoping it would stick." Given the reputation of Maple Grove Raceway as one of the fastest tracks on the tour, many began to speculate that the 200- mph mark might finally be bro- ken in the Pro Stock Motorcycle class, but that didn't happen this weekend. The best speeds re- corded were in the high 197-mph range. "We just didn't have the conditions we need to run 200 this weekend," explained Andrew Hines. "For it to happen, we have to have a big tailwind and that never materialized. That means we're probably going to have to wait until sometime in 2015 at the earliest." Andrew Hines made what might have seemed to be a minor modi- fication to his Screamin' Eagle V-Rod when he moved the rear- cylinder exhaust from the right side to the left, but according to Hines, it paid big dividends. "We have always run both pipes out the right side, but we found that we were having drivability prob- lems with the bikes rolling to the left because of the thrust," Hines said. "We moved the rear exhaust and it actually helped get rid of that rolling sensation." A week after winning his first race in St. Louis, Jerry Savoie was looking for more in Reading, but his race ended early when his bike wouldn't shift during his round-two match against Scotty Pollacheck. Matt Smith's 2014 season is very much like a broken record as his Nitro Fish Buell once again was felled by mechanical prob- lems. This time, the transmission appeared to be the culprit. "It's one of those things where about once in 30 passes, it doesn't want to shift," Smith said. " Professional snowmobile racer continued on next page Krawiec (near lane) beat Petrolhead Buell's Scotty Pollacheck (far lane) in the finals in Pennsylvania.

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