Interview: NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle Champion Andrew Hines

| December 31, 2015

You can read the original magazine story by clicking HERE.

Story and Photography by Kevin McKenna

He’s been known to sweat every last detail, play out every possible scenario, 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 championships before and I know they’re never over until their 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 respectable 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 two more than me. That was a huge difference as far as I was concerned. That was our game plan but it didn’t quite work out.”

Savoie did as many had expected—he qualified number one in Pomona and entered the final day of the season needing to make up just two rounds on Hines. Adding to the drama, the qualifying ladder had Hines and Savoie on a collision course in the semi-final round if both riders managed to get that far. For Savoie, the math was simple; win the race and he’d win the championship regardless of what Hines did. On race day, Hines and Savoie each won their first elimination round and to no one’s surprise, Savoie had the quickest bike in the round.

Just about the time that Hines began to have the impending feeling of doom begin to creep into his thoughts, his Harley-Davidson teammate Eddie Krawiec came to the rescue. Krawiec was paired against Savoie in the second round and somehow managed to win the round, deciding the title in Hines’ favor. Krawiec, prevailed in what may have been one of the ugliest races of the season. When Krawiec launched, his V-Rod spun the tire and he made a hard move toward the centerline. He barely missed knocking over a timing marker which would have meant an automatic disqualification. While Krawiec was busy just trying to get his V-Rod to the finish line, he was completely unaware that behind him, Savoie was coasting to a stop after spinning the rear tire violently as soon as he dumped the clutch. For all of it, Hines had a ringside seat.

“I was next to run right after Eddie, so I was sitting on the starting line right behind him in the same lane,” Hines recalled. “I saw Jerry spin the tire and shut off and then I watched Eddie’s run and he was all over the track. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Eddie, if you cross the centerline, I’m going to choke you.’ I didn’t have the best view but when I saw our crew jumping up and down and celebrating, I knew it was over. Then my wife, Tanya, came over and gave me a kiss on the helmet. It was a huge relief. It took me a couple of seconds to get my composure because I still had to go out and run my race. The whole thing was a bit surreal.”

With Krawiec’s win, Hines clinched his fifth championship, tying a record held by late NHRA Hall of Famer Dave Schultz. At 32, Hines also became the youngest NHRA racer to win five titles, regardless of class.

“For the last month or so, I was just trying to keep my head level,” Hines said. “As good as Jerry’s bike has been, I didn’t think the championship would be decided this way. Jerry has been so fast, especially during the Countdown, but it’s good to have a teammate like Eddie that you can rely on. My outstanding Harley-Davidson team did a great job of keeping me focused and keeping the pressure off of me. We didn’t have a single run this season where I had to shut off early or abort due to a mechanical problem. They look after every meticulous detail. That made a big difference because as we saw, the championship was really close and every round counted.”

For Hines, 2015 wasn’t the best season of his career, but it may have been one of his most rewarding. He won four races, which was two less than last season and his round-win record was 30-12, far less than the dominating 42-10 mark he posted a year ago. The big difference is that Hines peaked during the Countdown to the Championship, NHRA’s six race playoff that determines the championship. Hines won three of those six events to successfully defend his 2014 title.

“We struggled early in the season and a lot of that was due to the new Sunoco fuel we were required to use,” Hines said. “It was quite a bit different from what we ran last year and we had to chase the tune-up a lot of times. Sometimes, we thought we had a handle on it and then we’d get lost again. It was frustrating but our team never gave up. My brother, Matt, and our guys just kept working and working until they finally figured it out.”

While Hines admittedly struggled at times, his statistics were also likely affected by the parity that now defines the Pro Stock Motorcycle class. The days where Hines and Krawiec could win 15 of 16 races, as they did in 2012, are long gone. Effective rule changes have now allowed the Harley-Davidson, Buell, Suzuki and the new Victory brands to compete on equal footing. While Hines and Krawiec combined to win eight races, Karen Stoffer and Savoie scored five wins for Suzuki, the father-son team of Hector Arana Sr. and Jr. won three races on their Lucas Oil Buells. Two-time World champ Matt Smith also made tremendous progress with three final round appearances on his new Victory Gunner.

“This was a long road; we had struggled in the middle of year and that helps make this championship even more special,” Hines said. “We stunk up the joint for the first half of the season but my team stuck together and overcame everything that was thrown at us. All of us had a lot of stress going on. I think that even our families could see that. Back at our shop, we were battling to make horsepower and to make sure that our V-Rods could find the winner’s circle again. Eddie went on a bit of a tear at midseason and that was such a relief; just to know that we could go the distance again. Luckily, we finished the season strong and were able to bring home another championship.”

In motorcycle drag-racing circles, Hines descends from royalty. His father, Byron, is the mechanical genius behind the Vance & Hines empire and a 2014 inductee into the AMA Hall of Fame. Older brother, Matt, raced for nearly a decade and won three championships and 30 races before retiring to become a crew chief for the Vance & Hines factory-backed Harley V-Rod program. Still just 32, Andrew appears to be well on his way to blowing away the NHRA record books. He has now tied Dave Schultz’s record of five championships. Hines also finished the season with 42 wins, one more than Sampey and just three behind Schultz’s class record of 45. That’s a record that he’s likely to break next season.

“I don’t think about that stuff too much,” Hines said. “I just try to take it year by year and race by race. I mean it’s awesome to have five championships and it’s great that Eddie’s win in Pomona was the 75th for Harley-Davidson in NHRA. I’m proud to be a part of that. We’re going to enjoy this championship for a while but we know that we also need to get back to work. Everyone else isn’t going to take the winter off, so we can’t either. We need to spend the winter in our shop getting ready for next season. With Jerry and Karen Stoffer winning a bunch of races we’ve already seen how good the Suzuki combination is and it’s only going to get better. We’ve also got Matt Smith, who made a lot of progress with his Victory this season. It’s only going to get tougher from here.”

You can read the original magazine story by clicking HERE.