What made Eddie Krawiec and Andrew Hines so aggravated about this time last year was the mockery of their Vance & Hines Screamin' Eagle Harley-Davidson team. Competitor Jerry Savoie was among those who poked fun at them, resurrecting the worn "Screaming Chickens" taunt.

Today the antagonism -- friendly and funny on a personal level between the Harleys and the Have-Nots but genuinely and firmly hostile toward the NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle dominators from a professional standpoint -- centers on peasants.

The Medieval European Serf Collection was the hit of the Sonoma fashion runway this past weekend. Hector Arana Jr. crew members Adam Arana, Dan Gonzalez, and Charles Gordon marched up to the starting line during qualifying dressed as peasants.

They did so in response to Krawiec's silly remark at Denver the week before that he and Hines should name their bikes "Achilles," in honor of the Greek mythological war hero who slew Trojan warrior Hector.

"To me, those words hurt: 'He killed the Hectors,' " Hector Arana Sr. said. "Hey, those are words for me that are going to make me work harder. I can't wait until I put them down."

His son, who races a matching Lucas Oil Buell and has combined with his dad to earn four No. 1 qualifying positions and three runner-up finishes in eight races so far this season, explained his team's opinion.

"It was very true what [Krawiec] said: Their equipment that they're using is far superior to ours. They're like gods," Arana Jr. said. "They get to go run by run and not have to work on the bikes. Every two runs, we're pulling valve covers off and doing all kinds of work in order to maintain these motors. We only get so many runs out of them. We're pushing them to the limit, and we're working hard from the very beginning of the track to all the way down. We're working like peasants."

So the Arana team members cleverly went about their business clad in beige bedsheets that were crudely cut to slip over their heads and cinched at the waist. The revolt was to express what they and many others think is an unfair advantage for the Harley-Davidson drag-racing representatives.

They chose to wear peasant -style clothing to protest the NHRA overlords' exclusive deal with the iconic bike manufacturer. To them the joke was that the NHRA added extra weight to the Harleys in the name of parity. Clearly what they would have preferred was that Krawiec and Hines had been sentenced to ride their bikes wearing potato sacks and blindfolds.

Even before they hit the track Friday, the Arana camp offered three sandbags for sale at their pit area, implying that the sandbags symbolize the Harley-Davidson team. The hint is that if the Harleys really rode all-out, their overwhelming advantage would force the NHRA to penalize them even more to prevent a rebellion movement from storming the Manor at Glendora, trying to overthrow the regime.

Krawiec signed the sandbags. Then before eliminations Sunday, someone had added a box of tissues, which bore Krawiec and Hines signatures, a jab back that the Aranas are crying. He said, too, that at Denver someone had glued two pennies, tail side (supposedly unlucky side) up to their hauler lifts.

"We had two of our competitors or whoever they were saying, 'Let’s give these guys some bad luck.' I took it as good luck, to strive to do better. I took that penny and stuck it in my leathers and called it my unlucky penny. It turned out it was my lucky penny," the Denver and Sonoma winner said.

"I think it's in good fun, all the back and forth," Krawiec said. "It's the Hectors versus the Harleys, like the Clash of the Titans."

As for the sandbags and peasant costumes, Arana Sr. said they just gags.

"We're just trying to have fun," Arana Sr. said. "We're not trying to be disrespectful. We just want to have fun. He did make a statement, so we're going to run with it. To my surprise, the fans reacted great. They got a good laugh out of it, so overall, it was a good thing."

Krawiec, too, said he was playing, for the sake of entertainment.

"I have more respect for those two guys than pretty much anybody here," he said, referring to the Aranas. "They work, they're good, they're competitive, and they really want to win as much as anybody else does. We joke back and forth.

At Denver, I said, 'We ought to name our Harley-Davidsons Achilles, because Achilles is the one that killed the Hectors.' "It's just one of those things that adds a little bit of drama and spice," Krawiec said. "I think they took it a little more personal than what it was meant to be.

"The most important things for us as a class as a whole is TV time and coverage," he said. "We struggle. We're the smallest class. We don't go to every event. If we can do this little bit of drama back and forth, obviously it draws attention and fans and everybody get excited over it. Last year from the Countdown on, we had the most TV coverage. We killed in TV coverage. For us, that really helped out. It all stemmed from people talking trash.

"It just adds to the excitement. I think it's what you need. It needs to be interesting. Racing can be bland and plain, but when you add a little spice to it, it gives you something to look forward to. As long as you don't cross that line and get personal, it gives it a little drama," he said. "The next race: 'What are they going to do? What are they going to say?'

"Everybody sitting here, yes, they're here for racing, but they're here for entertainment. And we are their entertainment," Krawiec said. "Until every racer here understands the fact that racing is really secondary -- we're not here for ourselves. Yes, we're out here for ourselves. But the reality is we're racing for the fans."

He said the fans always enjoy more interaction -- between themselves and the racers and among the racers.

"I probably had 200 people come by our pit area this weekend, excited about what I said. It's no digs taken towards them. I have a ton of respect for those guys. You just say little things." Krawiec said.

"They came out dressed as peasants. It was funny. I laughed. They had sandbags. I was the first person  -- they looked at me -- I said, 'Hold on. Let me sign that.' I signed it, 'Denver 2012.'

"I got asked what should I run? I said, 'If I got 1.05 [seconds in] 60-foot, I should go [6].80.' They said, 'Wooah - .80!' " he said, mimicking their mocking tone. "I said, 'Yeah. We went to the hardware store and all the bags of sand were gone, so now we're going to have to [run all-out]. Then we went out there and I went .80. You got to know your equipment."

The New Jersey native, whom some snidely are calling "Snookie" on Internet posts, simply calls it as he sees it. And that includes the reality that one of these days, on any given Sunday, someone will defeat him and Hines.

"We're going to be beat. We're going to lose. When we do lose, there's going to be a big cheer on one and a boo on the other end. It's racing. We've lost before. We've lost many races, and we've come back to win many races. So just because you lose a race doesn't mean you're not going to win another race," he said. "You should learn from every loss and take every win as a win."

Neither group of racers has personal animosity toward the other. The real bullying, the non-Harley riders contend, is being done by Harley-Davidson itself and the NHRA officials who take money, and by insinuation, orders from the motorcycle giant. The anger is directed not toward Krawiec and Hines personally but at the increasing performance (and performance-capability) gap between the Harley-Davidson camp and everyone else's. "The peasants" aren't jealous of the wealth of Wallys and Full Throttle standings status the Pro Stock Motorcycle nobility enjoy -- they just want the same chance to earn the same.

On the track, the flogging of the "peasants" continued. Arana Jr. committed the first foul start of his career, so keyed up was he to beat Hines in the semifinal.

"I was amped up, pumped up, ready to go," Arana Jr. said. "I was going for the light; I wanted to win bad. It just goes to show we were going for it. We're pushing the Tree. I needed any little thing to beat him, and unfortunately we ended up on the wrong side of the light. We need to go home, work hard, and try to find an edge so we can give these guys something."

And Krawiec defeated Arana Sr. to reach the final round, but Arana Sr. left the line first. "I know we lost -- we spun the tire -- but I did my job, so it doesn't hurt as much," Arana said. But "He's the one who killed the Hectors" is still ringing in his ears.

At Sonoma, Krawiec won his fifth race in eight bike-class appearances on the schedule this year. Hines, last Sunday's runner-up, has won the other three.

Others, some from competing teams and some from the media, are joining the Aranas in expressing displeasure with or at the least cocking an eyebrow at the state of the class.

Competition Plus owner / editor Bobby Bennett penned an editorial asserting that "the NHRA has put its own integrity for sale" and "the NHRA chose money over integrity in this fiasco." Bennett said. The NHRA should require manufacturers to make their parts available to all the teams in the division," and he warned that "their taking the money and allowing a manufacturer to circumvent rules created in the interest of fair competition" will ruin the class.

In the process, he suggested that NHRA's decisions also in the end could taint Vance & Hines, an organization that has raced within the rules though the rules assuredly are skewed.

"If I were Harley-Davidson, I would be concerned. They may be winning a battle while losing the war of public opinion. Certainly Vance & Hines is benefiting from the deal  but are not the ones to blame. They are doing what they should do, race within the rules presented to them and winning. However, how can you be proud of your wins when the rules, and not your efforts, are the reason for winning?" Bennett wrote.

In response, Mark Peiser, White Alligator racing crew chief and longtime participant in the Pro Stock Motorcycle class, said in response via Facebook, "I've been living this dream for years. It  really is a nightmare. I was involved in a parity meeting in Glendora in Jan. '08 with the powers [that] be (as high up the food chain as you can go). I left that meeting believing we had presented a good case and left them with several real possibilities at resolving the parity issues. I wish I had gone fishing those three days I gave up for this meeting. I'll never get them back, and in the long run all we got was lip service. Harley won the championship that year and got a complete engine redesign that I'm sure was on the table while I was wasting my life trying to help their business with a real solution to a real problem. There should be no room in racing for political motivated rules but that's where NHRA PSM is."

Motorcycle Street & Strip Magazine Editor Steven Summers said he wrote a letter to Harley-Davidson media-relations representative Matt King, informing him that his magazine "will not help promote or assist in any way, to legitimize any wins by the Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle team . . . as long as the current unfair and biased class rules continue to exist in the PSM class."

Summers charged that NHRA has altered its rules to favor the exclusive Harley-Davidson team and that those two entities have "a biased relationship . . . that very obviously provides a deliberate and unfair advantage to the V&H / Harley-Davidson PSM team."

Reporter Bob Padecky, of the Santa Rosa (Calif.) Press-Democrat wrote this past weekend that he had spoken to Graham Light, NHRA's senior vice-president of racing operations, who emphasized what others besides Krawiec and Hines had achieved in  qualifying.

And Padecky wrote, "NHRA operates in the good ol' U.S. of A., where we remember who won and disregard the rest. So maybe some of the Harley success is just dumb luck at the right time, but when a manufacturer keeps its product to itself, in a sport that would like to think of itself as transparent, such secrecy at the very least is worth three sandbags and a box of Kleenex."

And a few beige bedsheets just might complete the lovely parting-gift package for today's aspiring Pro Stock Motorcycle racers.