IN
THE
WIND
P40
HINES FIRES FIRST SHOT IN NHRA COUNTDOWN
R
eigning NHRA Mello Yello
Pro Stock Motorcycle
champion Andrew Hines con-
tinued his title defense with an
impressive victory at the NHRA
Carolina Nationals at the luxuri-
ous zMax Dragway in Charlotte.
Hines rode his Screamin' Eagle
Harley-Davidson to victory
against Victory Gunner's Matt
Smith in the final round. Hines
left the starting line first and
never looked back. The final
score was a 6.88 for Hines and
a 6.91 for Smith.
"I'm not quite certain why but
zMax Dragway has been kind to
me," said Hines. "The first three
or four times here I never got
past the first round. My Harley
V-Rod was running straight and
true and putting up big speeds
and it's doing it consistently.
We've had to figure out how to
get a win on a tricky track but
everything played out in our
favor. We took a chance and
changed a bunch of parts on
our engine at mid-season look-
ing for more power and consis-
tency and it paid off.
"Matt [Smith] and I have had
our history. We're rivals but we
have fun. We had a pretty good
battle here in 2013 and I was al-
most expecting another [staging
duel] this time but I was hot and
I was ready to go and didn't want
to play any games."
Hines was rock-solid in quali-
fying with 6.8-second runs in
three of four sessions. He car-
ried that momentum on to race
day with wins against Chaz Ken-
nedy, Steve Johnson and White
The reigning champ, Andrew Hines, hits the ground running in the first round of the
Countdown to the Championship to take over the lead from teammate Eddie Krawiec.
