Drag Illustrated Issue 129, January / February 2018 | Page 90

THE
CHAMPIONS
ISSUE
nhrA p ro s toCk m otorCyCle
Eddie Krawiec
H
umbled by a decision that
didn’t go as planned, Eddie
Krawiec didn’t get too down on
himself. Instead, he put together
one of the best performances
in NHRA Countdown to the
Championship history.
After the decision to debut a new chassis didn’t
lead to the desired results, Plan B proved to be
even better, as Krawiec won four of the six playoff
races to claim his fourth world championship in
Pro Stock Motorcycle. It was a phenomenal run
against a loaded field, one that came after a deci-
sion that certainly required some soul-searching.
“To be quite honest, we thought it was going to
be easy,” Krawiec says. “We’re going to build this
new bike, we’re going to go race it, we’re going
to have great success. Well, it proved us wrong. I
think the greatest thing about it is, it made us a
little more humble here because we realized we
don’t know everything. There’s no such time that
you should ever think you know it all. We have
great resources and a lot of good people behind
us and in our shop that work here. It showed
all of us that we made a mistake. The chassis
was not correct. We had to go back and correct
those changes.”
With it being the middle of the season, that
meant Plan B – going back to the old chassis –
had to become Plan A. It turned into one of the
best decisions Krawiec and his team would ever
make. The numbers are otherworldly when the
U.S. Nationals is included with the six playoff
races. Krawiec won in Indy, giving him five wins
and six final round appearances over the last
seven events, and a remarkable 24-2 record in
eliminations.
The points race was never really in question in
the Countdown to the Championship, as Krawiec
started hot, and LE Tonglet, who won six races,
couldn’t keep up.
His seven wins in 2017 gave him 43 total in
Pro Stock Motorcycle history – good for third
all-time – but the situation and struggles that
eventually led to the late-season run and subse-
quent championship will forever be memorable
for Krawiec.
“It really made us dig deep and look at areas of
our motorcycle when we were struggling with the
chassis setup, made us dig deep and look for areas
of the motorcycle that we usually wouldn’t look at
because we’ve had good success,” Krawiec offers.
“Then we switched back to our old chassis with the
new Street Rod bodywork on it. It r eally showed
us how to refine what we had. Andrew (Hines)
kind of took over tuning roles, Matt (Hines) took
over the chassis role, I was a floater guy in be-
tween, working on motorcycles to get stuff done.
Man, it just made us so much better. I really do
believe that’s going to only make us better down
the road and continue to grow.” – JOSH HACHAT
DI DI DI
DI DI DI DI
DI DI DI
NHRA SUPER STOCK JUSTIN LAMB
90 | D r a g
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Issue 129