Lucas Oil rider Hector Arana had a shorter weekend. Arana has been chasing engine troubles the past few races and lost in the first round on Sunday.
Arana and the Lucas Oil Buell squared off against David Hope in the opening round. Arana was slow off the line and his 7.082 second pass at 182.01 mph wasn’t enough to overcome Hope’s .057 second advantage at the line and a 7.128 at 179.42 mph.
“We just need to figure out what’s really going on,” Arana said. “With the problem we’ve been having we’ve been tuning to it, and we just have to retune everything and start over again.
“Hopefully we can find this problem. It’s a shame it’s happening in the Countdown when it’s most important. Sometimes that’s how it goes.”
Arana, the defending class champion, fell to seventh in the season standings, but he is less than one round of racing outside the top five.