Hector Arana's answer might be in the oversized banner featuring him at Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the NFL's Indianapolis Colts.
 
It might be in all the promotional photos of Arana when he won last year's NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle championship.
 
It might be in the awareness he raised Saturday by overtaking Matt Smith to capture the No. 1 qualifying position for Sunday's FRAM-Autolite Nationals at Infineon Raceway.
 
The question he said he wrestled with was one about Lucas Oil.

Hector Arana's answer might be in the oversized banner featuring him at Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the NFL's Indianapolis Colts.
 
It might be in all the promotional photos of Arana when he won last year's NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle championship.
 
It might be in the awareness he raised Saturday by overtaking Matt Smith to capture the No. 1 qualifying position for Sunday's FRAM-Autolite Nationals at Infineon Raceway.
 
The question he said he wrestled with was one about Lucas Oil.
 
"Man, how can I help them market?" he asked himself over and over. "I'm just a motorcycle [rider]."
 
He said Forrest Lucas "has taught me how marketing is powerful." Arana, it turns out, has been listening and applying his lessons.
 
It's not uncommon for racers to promote their sponsors -- that's what they get paid to do. It's imperative if they hope to retain that sponsorship, the lifeblood of major motorsports.

But Arana is anything but common.
 
He's loyal to Forrest and Charlotte Lucas and the global company they have built. For Arana, that loyalty represents freedom.
 
For 27 years, Arana worked as a mechanic in the service department of a Cadillac dealership in Miami. And the boss wasn't keen on allowing him time off to pursue his racing interests.
 
He met Forrest through a friend in a phone conversation, and Lucas agreed to sponsor Arana and his motorcycle. This deal, almost 19 years ago, was the first in a string of Lucas Oil sponsorship agreements that span the continents and include racing teams, series, and tracks, the Colts' new stadium that will host the next Super Bowl and has been the site of the NCAA basketball Final Four, and even the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.
 
Lucas Oil opened a production plant in Corydon, Ind., in the heart of the area where Forrest Lucas used to drive a truck and dream about developing the oils and lubricants he thought his industry so badly needed. And Lucas asked Arana if he wanted to move up to Corydon and work fulltime at the plant.
 
Arana told his wife, Grace, "He asked twice, and he's not going to ask three times. So maybe we need to look at this and what we're going to do."
 
While he was in Indiana to compete in the U.S. Nationals, he and his family traveled the couple of hours to the small city in the rolling hills of Southern Indiana, near Louisville, to check out the plant.
 
"We stopped there, took a week off, looked around, looked at the new plant, and fell in love with it. This is the best move ever that I've done," Arana said. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be going north. If anything, south."
 
That's about where his children thought their social lives were going at the time.
 
"My kids were young," he said. "When we moved there, for the first few months, they'd say, 'As soon as I turn 18, I'm going to go back to Miami.' Now they're 21, 19, and 17, and they just love it there."
 
How could they not have fun at Holiday World theme park in nearby Santa Claus, Ind., with its world's tallest water ride, world's longest water coaster, and three world-class wooden roller coasters? Close-by Patoka Lake's pure water made a terrific place for swimming, bass fishing, and boating -- and a place to watch bald eagles and osprey and wild turkeys and deer -- an experience they never would have in Miami -- or hike and bike on the recreational trails.
 
Now Arana and three of his children -- Hector Jr., 21; Adam, 19; and Abigail, 17 -- work at the Lucas Oil plant and love living in Southern Indiana.
 
"Hector Jr. works at the maintenance department. He can fabricate and weld," Arana said of his eldest of four children who also works on the Lucas Oil Buell crew. "After work, he punches out and comes and helps me [prepare the bike for the next race].
 
"Adam, 19, worked in production and now he's in the shipping area. And he's doing well over there, too. My daughter Abigail works in the office," he said proudly. "We all work together and travel together. So it's nice. We stay together.
 
The family is getting used to the cold winter weather and change of seasons, he said.
 
"We love it. We love the mountains," the champion said. "I've done things I've never done before. I've done hunting. I've been exposed to different things that I've never done in my life."
 
Born in Miami, Arana andhis family moved to Puerto Rico when he was seven years old, to Arecibo, on the northern coast.
 
"We lived there for my childhood, so I'm used to land, the mountains . . . When I moved to Indiana, I see all that -- the hills, all the trees. It reminds me of Puerto Rico, close to home," Arana said.
 
"I'm allowed to work on my motorcycle and get everything ready," he said. Lucas "gives me a privilege. But if there's something I need to do -- if something breaks -- I stop what I'm doing. The No. 1 thing is the product. We need to get the product out there."
 
His job at the plant, he said, is "whatever they ask me to do. I don't care. I can machine a part, make a piston, fabricate something, work on the truck, mope the floor if I have to."
 
Has he mopped floors there?
 
"Yes, I have," he said, explaining that Forrest Lucas "believes that there's no one dedicated to one thing only. He needs something, he asks you, and you just do it. He never gave up. He believed in me."
 
But Arana is clearly happy to do that for the Lucases and their business, saying, "He gave me the chance, and I've got to do the same thing back -- whatever it takes. I don't care what I have to do."
 
Arana doesn't just represent Lucas Oil, the company. He represents the actual Lucas Oil product.
 
"It's easy to do this when the product is excellent," he said, almost as proud of the product as he is his children.
 
He said Lucas "goes there and inspects the product himself. And believe me, he has high standards. If something is not right, he says, 'Let's get rid of it.' It has to be right before it will go out. He believes that if you pay for it, you should get what you pay for.
 
"I've learned a lot from him. His standards, his morals are: Do it right.
 
"Any product, he goes through his own personal test with his own personal vehicle. We open up the engine and look to see if we have any issue. When everything checks out, then we release it," Arana said.
 
He participates in the testing every day.
 
"I drive this motor home," he said, pointing to his transportation to and from the races, "and put a lot of miles on it without changing the oil. We keep testing the oil, and the oil is good, so we say, 'Put another 5,000, 10,000 miles on it.
 
"Same thing with the racing oil. He develops a new oil. He talks to me about it. We put it on the bike, we run it, and I give him feedback. We run it three or four races to make sure. We don't want anyone to have any problem with it," Arana said.
 
"He half-joked that his bike was running so well last season, when he won the championship, "that I didn't want to give it up." But he said he realized that "he makes a product and it's for everyone to use it."
 
Customer concerns are paramount at Lucas Oil, he said.
 
"They are going to pay for this, and we're going to give them what we say: something good, something to help," Arana said. "Machinery is so expensive now. And with this product, your motor will live longer. You get more life out of it. That's the cheapest investment you're ever going to do -- protect your equipment or your new car that you pay $30-, $40-, $50-, $60-, $70,000 for.
 
"Here's another thing that people don't realize. You don't have to change your oil every 3,000 miles. You can go longer [between oil changes] and help the environment. We would consume less oil if we were to do all of that. There's a lot of quality, a lot of good things," he said.
 
So, now, why was Hector Arana worrying about not being able to help Lucas Oil with is marketing?