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 IHRA Empire Nationals - New York InternationalThe Chromatic Racing team of Mike Romine's Nitro Harley won best appearing team at the IHRA Empire Nationals. That was his first win in New York. But there were bigger wins in the making. In this the fourth month of the racing season, Romine finally qualified at his first IHRA event of the year. "I've never had racing season like this one," said the quiet but formidable competitor. Romine is used to qualifying high in two classes, on his Nitro Tomato in Top Fuel and his Yellow Banana in Pro Fuel when he races all-motorcycle events where he usually ends the day in the winner's circle on at least one. For the year 2000, Romine completely changed his entire program. With a new chassis, new motor components and new bodywork, the new millennium hadn't been good to the team. Until New York in July. Therefore, his 1999 "Nitro Tomato" became the "Yellow Banana II" for the IHRA Empire Nationals. After four outings and no qualifying, the team completed the conversion of the high-gear only bike to a Top Fuel set-up from it's Pro Fuel configuration for the all-motorcycle events, painted it yellow and finally qualified, his second personal win of the event. His third personal win came when he won the first round of eliminations. "We're not running as well as we'd like to run. But we're running well enough to qualify. Once you get into the field you can win. I slept better than I've slept in a while. From last year to this year we put the PRP Elite motor in the bike we're running here along with OCR cylinder heads. We ran it as a Pro Fueler two weeks ago in Columbus and blew it up when we were staging to leave the line." When he hit the throttle as the light turned green, it went boom. "Qualifying was a huge relief because we've been struggling all year just to qualify. We were happy with making the show but we need to run better than that run. We won the first round but the bike slowed down a little bit from the changes that we made. Luckily, for our sake Johnny Mancuso had a problem and spun the tire.We get to come back out. We went one way on the clutch and it was obviously wrong. Now that the rain has set in and it's cooled off 20 degrees from first round we may have to think about it. "Since I haven't been doing well this year, my reaction times are a little slow right now. Doug Vancil's pretty good on the tree usually and we ran him in the semi's. We spun the tire real bad on the starting line. We went with less clutch than the run before. I beat Doug on the tree. But it struck the tire so quick that I couldn't even recover. I don't know if I just picked a bad spot or if I just happened to, maybe it's making more power now that the air is more dense than it was before the rain. But we're happy. At least we're competitive now. We're not sitting in the stand watching. Twelve bikes came here and eleven of us go home without the trophy." Romine stated that, "I needed to step back and evaluate the situation. I'll be running the flame bike in Sturgis, South Dakota. Until then, we'll park it as we work out it's problems. We'll run the Flyin' Banana in Sturgis in Pro Fuel. So we'll run both classes like we have for the last three years there." Mike Romine is sponsored by Chromatic, Competition Inc. and Romine Cams. See Mike Romine race both of his Nitro Harley's next weekend, July 22 & 23 in Atlanta at the ADBA Hot Rods & Harleys event at Atlanta Dragway, July 29 & 30 at Route 66 for the AMRA event, August 4 - 6 at the IHRA Stanton, MI event then August 8 - 10 at the ADBA Races in Sturgis, SD. Related stories:
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