On the eve of race day, Hector Arana Jr. expecting a vicious battle among the top bikes

CONCORD, NC – Prior to this weekend’s 10th annual NHRA Carolina Nationals, Lucas Oil Racing TV pro Hector Arana Jr. named six riders he thought were capable of winning this year’s Pro Stock Motorcycle championship. Through qualifying for the 10th annual NHRA Carolina Nationals, Arana is looking pretty smart as his six selected teams, which includes his own group, fill out six of the top seven slots on the elimination ladder.

“It’s going to be a battle all the way and just like I said, the two Harleys, the two White Alligator bikes and me and Matt Smith are all running strong,” Arana said. “Of course, race day is a different deal altogether, especially during the Countdown, because the pressure goes way up, but so far things have gone about like I expected.

“We’re only .015 seconds off the pole so I’ll take that any day. A gap that small can be made up at the Christmas Tree, but that knife cuts both ways. We’ll need to get this Lucas Oil Racing TV Buell perfect and I’ll need to be on my game if we expect to go rounds tomorrow.”

Arana qualified fourth overall with a 6.840 at 196.07 mph. His strong effort sets up a first-round date with Kelly Clontz, who topped out at 6.957 at 194.83 mph. Because of his superior qualifying time, Arana will have lane choice over Clontz.

“It’s been an interesting weekend for us so far,” Arana said. “We’ve actually had to do a lot of work yesterday. We hurt an engine the first round, and we were a little slow there because of that, but we were able to fix it and come back strong and ended up being second fastest for Friday night’s round. That’s when we ran our 6.840 so we were really happy with that knowing there was still
more potential.

“We ran pretty good today while we were trying a couple of different things. I know we learnt some things about running in the heat and we have a good game plan for tomorrow. We were able to make a really good run just now on a hot, greasy track, which is what we will be racing on tomorrow so we are excited. We are just going to go one round at a time and see what we can do.”

Pro Stock Motorcycle eliminations begin at 1 p.m., Sunday. Live action will air on FOX Sports 1 from 2:30-5:30 p.m., Sunday. (Times are local and subject to change.)