After racing to the top of the Pro Stock Motorcycle order Friday, Hector Arana Jr. weighed in on class controversy that has erupted between Steve Johnson and Matt Smith as a result of the NHRA Tech Committee adding weight to the V-Twin-powered entrants.

“You know what? NHRA is trying to make parity, and we need parity in the class in order for us to have a strong class. As you can see, we have the highest count in the pro category, so that’s good, but we’ve got to maintain that because there are a lot of Suzuki riders out there. You know, you want fair racing. You don’t want just the same five guys or whoever it is. You want that challenge,” the Lucas Oil Buell racer said. “I want that challenge. So I feel that it was a step in the right direction. We’ll see what it does. But it helped me out a little bit. I was always like five pounds heavy, and I didn’t have the ability to add weight to the bike. So now even though it does hurt us because we are 15 pounds heavier, now I can play the weight game and be right on target.”

How the NHRA decided to achieve parity bothers some factions of the class. Arana indicated he isn’t certain whether that was the right way or th wrong way to go about getting the desired result.

“Well,” Arana said, “the problem is if you take the weight off the Suzukis, you make it harder for bigger riders to then make weight. I don’t know if the weight was the right thing, but it’s a step. It’s a start to try to get more parity. We’ll just have to see how everything goes and look at the numbers and see what it does for the class.”

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