Cycle News

IN THE WIND P36 KRAWIEC BACK IN THE FIGHT A pair of early losses at the last two races could have all but ended Eddie Krawiec's bid for a fourth NHRA Mello Yello Series Pro Stock Motorcycle Championship, but the Screamin' Eagle Harley rider rallied to win the Dodge Nationals in Reading, Pennsylvania, October 1-2, and now he's back among the contenders. Krawiec entered the Reading round in fifth place, trailing the leader, his teammate Andrew Hines, by 76 points in the standings. Following his fourth win of the sea- son, Krawiec is now ranked second, just 38 points behind Hines with three races remain- ing. "We've got a real fight on our hands now," Krawiec said. "I struggled at the last two races and that was a really bad time to do that. I don't know if this was a must-win race but it was pretty darn close. I know I couldn't have let Drew [Hines] gain any more ground on me, so in that sense, we had to win more rounds than he did." The Reading event was plagued by poor weath- er from start to finish. Both of Friday's scheduled qualifying rounds were cancelled, and on Satur- day the rain cleared just long enough to complete one qualifying round. Several of the championship contenders did not make representative runs, which made for additional drama on race day. For example, points leader Hines was the low qualifier and he was paired with third-ranked Chip Ellis in round one. Krawiec was the number-two qualifier and his reward was a round-one meeting against Star Buell's Angelle Sampey, who entered the race ranked second in the standings. The drama ended early when both of the Harley riders helped themselves with wins over Ellis and Sampey. "It was one of those crazy days where you didn't know what to expect," Krawiec said. "Since nobody got more than one run in qualifying, we all just had to guess when it came to our setup. Thankfully, my Screamin' Eagle Harley guys came up with a good setup off the truck, and [we] had some good data to tune with. Some of the other teams weren't as fortunate." Krawiec defeated Sampey with a 6.760, the best run of the event, and then went on to defeat the Suzukis of Karen Stoffer and LE Tonglet with runs of 6.77 and 6.78, respectively. In the final round, Krawiec rode to a 6.81 to stop rookie-of- the-year contender Cory Reed, who trailed with a 6.95. A round earlier, Reed scored the biggest win of his young career when he used a starting- line holeshot to beat Hines. "I accomplished my main goal, which was to come here and win," Krawiec said. "If you win races in the Countdown [playoffs] you're going to be fighting for the championship when we get to the last race in Pomona. This race was big for our whole team. You don't draw Chip and Angelle in round one and say, 'This should be easy.' It was a tough day for us." Kevin McKenna PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEVIN MCKENNA Eddie Krawiec kept his title hopes alive with a win in Pennsylvania.

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