If hindsight is 20/20 then Hector Arana can see clearly now.

Arana, who captured his sixth No. 1 qualifying effort of the season during the NHRA Carolinas Nationals in Concord, NC, is second guessing his decision to test new parts during the final two sessions of qualifying.

He missed the combination on both of the Saturday runs, shaking the tires in the first run and breaking the transmission on the second, managing a 7.06 elapsed time, far below Friday’s 6.965.

If hindsight is 20/20 then Hector Arana can see clearly now.

Arana, who captured his sixth No. 1 qualifying effort of the season during the NHRA Carolinas Nationals in Concord, NC, is second guessing his decision to test new parts during the final two sessions of qualifying.

He missed the combination on both of the Saturday runs, shaking the tires in the first run and breaking the transmission on the second, managing a 7.06 elapsed time, far below Friday’s 6.965.

On Friday, Arana swept the bonus qualifying points. On Saturday the testing provided nothing but a headache as he missed out on the opportunity to gain six additional bonus points. The decision to test on Saturday only makes Sunday’s eliminations more challenging.

Arana won’t make the same mistake of testing within the national event parameters again.

“That’s what it looks like, that’s what we are going to have to do,” answered Arana, when asked if he will test outside of an event next time. “There’s no way to be here and try those things I wanted to try.”

And next time, Arana says, he won’t leave those bonus points on the table, no matter how overwhelming the desire arises to test.

“I was skeptical about the points system coming in and how it was going to work. So far in the first event it has worked to my favor,” Arana said. “I’m loving it, but it was kind of hard to make a decision on things I wanted to try out today. I thought about it [testing] but I have to do things to win races on Sunday.” 

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