“I grew up three hours south of here and spent ages 10 to 20 here,” Hines said. “I know this place as my home. To come back here and get a win on the mountain says a lot about my team. We didn’t have the best motorcycle all weekend, but we were able to get the job done.”

Karen Stoffer rode her yellow and black GEICO Powersports Suzuki to a runner-up finish Sunday.

In her best outing of the 2010 season, Stoffer blazed a trail from the No. 3 starting slot to the money round by knocking off Angie Smith and top-10 riders Craig Treble and Steve Johnson to get her chance at Andrew Hines, the second-ranked rider in the class. 

With the trophy on the line, Stoffer and Hines left within a few thousandths of a second of one another with Hines slowly creeping away at each incremental timer to take the win. The final tally showed Hines crossing the finish line with a 7.342 at 178.02 mph to Stoffer's 7.402 at 175.94 mph.

"It's kind of fitting that we had a finish like this up here because it seems like we've been climbing a mountain since Gainesville," said Stoffer, who leaves the race ninth in the Full Throttle points. "We're ecstatic. We made a nice move in the points and we were kind of in control of our own destiny today taking on the riders we needed to beat in the standings.

"This gives us so much confidence, all of us on this team, including the rider, to have a result like this. It shows us we have the power, that we know how to setup the bike and tune it for good runs. It's just a feel good deal all the way around."

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