INTERVIEW
P140
NHRA PRO STOCK MOTORCYCLE CHAMPION ANDREW HINES
H
e's been known to sweat every last
detail, play out every possible sce-
nario, and count every precious
championship point, so when Screamin'
Eagle Harley-Davidson's Andrew Hines won
the penultimate round of the NHRA season in
Las Vegas, he was able to get a good night's
sleep for the first time in weeks.
"Almost," Hines said. "I almost slept
through the night. I still had a lot of things on
my mind, even after we won in Las Vegas.
I've been in the position to win champion-
ships before and I know they're never over
until they're over. There are all kinds of crazy
things that can happen. I think this is the
eighth time that I've gone into the last race
with a chance to win the championship and
I've won five of them, but I've also lost three
and some of them were tough. I won't take
anything for granted."
Hines defeated his main championship
rival, White Alligator Suzuki's Jerry Savoie in
the final round in Las Vegas and that meant
that he was able to enter the season-ending
Auto Club NHRA Finals in Pomona with a re-
spectable 46-point lead in the standings. Had
he lost, Hines would have been just six points
in front of Savoie. That would have been a
bad spot for Hines to be in since Savoie's
Suzuki was clearly the best bike in the Pro
Stock Motorcycle class for the final third of
the season and he was the odds-on favorite
to win the season finale.
"For me, the big thing going into Pomona
was to keep Jerry from getting a bunch of
bonus points in qualifying," Hines said. "If
I could keep the lead to 41 or more points,
he'd have to win three more rounds than me
on Sunday. Otherwise, he just needed to go
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY
KEVIN MCKENNA
Andrew Hines didn't have
the best season of his
career but he still found a
way to win his fifth title.
