VOL. 50 ISSUE 29 JULY 23, 2013
Nine years
after his latest
NHRA victory,
Shawn Gann
returns to the
winner's circle
7.37 elapsed time.
"It was a long drought, but if you give
up the fight you're never gonna get out
of that drought," Gann said. "This is a
big win. My bike has always been fast,
but I've had problems that have plagued
me. I'm the heaviest rider out here and I
P91
Briefly...
LAT Oils Buell's Mike Berry
lives in the Denver suburb of
Littleton and builds his own engines so it stands to reason that
he'd have an advantage whenever NHRA makes its annual
visit to Bandimere Speedway.
Berry did enjoy one of his best
performances of the season as
he qualified number three and
reached the semi final round,
but he's not so sure it was a
case of home-track advantage.
"We found some problems with
our bike this week so I'd like to
think that we would have been
fast anywhere," said Berry. "We
were having issues with crankshafts and I'm not so sure that
it hasn't been an issue for a
long time. Once we fixed that,
the bike responded. I mean I
probably have a little bit of an
edge because we do all our
dyno work up here, but hopefully we'll be good the rest of
the season."
Pro Stock Motorcycles make
approximately 25-30-percent
less horsepower when racing
in Denver, but that didn't stop
Sovereign/Star Buell's Michael
Ray from smoking the rear tire
on two runs, including the
opening round when he slowed
to a 7.59 and lost to Steve Johnson's 7.309. "We found out that
we had a bad tire," said Ray.
"It was just one of those little
things that come up from time to
time, but I'm not really discouraged. We've got another race in
Sonoma next weekend and I'm
looking forward to going there
and trying again."
There are now just two races
remaining until the 10-bike field
for the Countdown to the
Championship is finalized and
the battle for the last couple
of positions is shaping up to
be epic. Following the Denver
round, Steve Johnson holds
down the number 10 spot and
Andrew Hines is just 43-points
behind in 11th. Former champion LE Tonglet is also in the mix,
51-points out of 10th. In NHRA
Pro competition, each round
win is worth 20 points.
Despite the obvious challenges
of tuning at altitude, there was
a solid field of 19 Pro Stock
Motorcycles in Denver. Tough
Girl Designs Suzuki's Katie
Sullivan was the 16th qualifier
with a 7.39 while Jerry Savoie,
Freddie Camarena, and James
Surber missed the field.
There is an old saying in drag
racing that the Christmas Tree
can be your best friend or your
worst enemy and for the Arana
family, the latter seems to apply
this weekend. Hector Arana Sr.
lost in the first round on a holeshot, Adam Arana red-lighted in
the second round and Hector
Jr. was very late off the starting
line in the final round. "I need to
get out of my funk and stop redlighting because that's the only
way to win rounds," said Adam.
"It seems like the first round has
been easy for me but the second round has been kicking my
rear-end."
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