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Romine
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 Happy to Be Here | | Chromatic’s Mike Romine at the IHRA Autumn Nationals, Rockingham Dragway, September 23, 2001 |
Romine's round one burnout before he won against Jay Turner.
At the end of an IHRA race day, waiting for the track to be fine-tuned for the final round of Screamin’ Eagle Nitro Harley by the safety crew is fine with Mike Romine. He would be IN that final.
The Romine team prepared for a better track after the weather changed.
Earlier in the day with the sun continuing to beat on the track, the riders and fans, Romine was ecstatic. (For Romine, that means a big smile and he might raise his arms in a gesture, as he did. He’s pretty low key.) “Believe it or not, I finally won a round!” he said. Romine himself was surprise. “I probably had the bike as soft in clutch and gear ratios as I’ve ever run one and won the round. It only ran 6.77. We were so scared of spinning the tire, I had it so soft, that I was telling them all before we went to the line, it’s probably not gonna run good. I just didn’t trust the racetrack and it worked.”
Romine won the semi-final when Steve Stordeur broke.
And that was only first round. “I almost forgot what it feels like to cross the finish line ahead of another person at an IHRA race. It’s hot and sunny as it is and the track is not very good. We just felt that was our best shot to win was to be sure that we could make it down to the end of the track without spinning the tire. The competition had too much in his. If he’d hooked, he might have won because they probably had it pretty stout. If I’d known I would have been in the right lane, I might have stepped on it a little bit harder. I assumed that I would end up in the left lane and every time I’ve run there, I’ve smoked the tire. When he put me in that lane, I said I don’t know why, but I’ll take it. The left lane seemed to be the choice of all of the lower qualifiers but I haven’t gotten down that lane yet.”
Going into the semi-final, Romine had tough competition but he also had lane choice. “I’m going to choose the right lane. We’re stepping it up a little bit, now that I know that I’m in the right lane. I’m not making a big change. I’ve sat in the bleachers on Sunday at enough races, watching the sun beating on the track, seeing that 6.60’s will win. I don’t have any more in it than that. If I try to go any quicker than that, I’ll just spin the tire. If he out runs me, he outruns me. I’m just trying not to beat myself. This year, I’ve beaten myself half of the time.”
Romine won the semi when his competition broke. “We smoked the tire, terribly. The clutch was so soft the first run I wanted to step it up a little bit and I did very little. It just smoked immediately. But I’ve been to enough of these races to know that you don’t have to be the fastest one to win. We’ve gotten real lucky. I think the bike will run well in the final, if it doesn’t smoke the tire. It ran 202 on a pass where I was pedaling it in and out of the throttle. Racing like this makes you wonder. We’ve lost races running 6.50’s. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.”
As the team prepared for the final, weather set in and rain poured. Late evening, but not quite late night, the Pro classes were finally called to the staging lanes. Romine had changed his tune-up from the earlier one, where humidity ruled the day. “After the semi, we kind of put it back the way it was when we showed up here. Then the air got significantly better, so we tuned for that. “
Running Vancil in the final is Romine’s most familiar and not intimidating at all. “We ran Doug in the final at the Fall Rockingham race last year. In 1999, our only final was against Doug. We were runner-up. Today, we just need to run our own race and not worry about how quick he’s going. As I said, it’s not always the quickest bike that wins.”
Unfortunately for Romine, Vancil tuned to the new air, too and found the quickest run in the class for the weekend. Still, Romine was in great spirits for a runner-up. “We lose. But we didn’t spin the tire. I don’t know what really happened. I need to look at the computer. It had a 1.11 60 foot. 2.88 330 foot time and it just, a little bit before the eighth mile, started laying down like the clutch was slipping again. I took that weight off so it wouldn’t spin. It felt like it drove through the clutch in high gear. Once he passed me and drove away, I just clicked it off. There just wasn’t any sense in possibly breaking parts the way it was acting.”
“Doug ran good. I didn’t have anything for a 6.44 run. But still, we made a big points move from seventh to fifth and that makes us happy.”
Romine’s staying on the East Coast for two days then will pull into Maryland International Raceway for the IHRA President’s Cup this weekend. Thursday, he’ll be visiting a Children’s Hospital in the area with other IHRA racers. Watch TNN this weekend for Romine at the IHRA Epping event.
Mike Romine’s Nuclear Tomato is sponsored by Chromatic, Andrews Products, Saddlemen and Romine Racing.
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