Hector Arana Jr. said, “It was nothing.”
 
But it was a move that certainly meant something to reigning Pro Stock Motorcycle champion Jerry Savoie, owner of the White Alligator Racing team that includes L.E. Tonglet.
 
The hot temperature and a hot motor combined to make Savoie hot under the collar Sunday at the NHRA Dodge Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway, near Reading, Pa.
 
During the staging process for the semifinal round between Arana Jr. and Tonglet, a misunderstanding developed. And Savoie wasn’t shy about voicing his displeasure to Hector Arana Sr. with what he considered stall tactics in the other lane.
 
“The motor’s getting hot, and they’re fiddle-farting around. He’s pre-staged and waiting forever. And he still didn’t roll in. Then when he finally went in and lit both bulbs, they waited forever still,” Savoie fumed. “You want to play that s---? We’re in the Countdown. The game’s on.”
 
Arana Jr. blew off the incident overall, but not before he accused Tonglet of instigating the trouble by “double-bulbing” him.
 
Arana Jr. said, “I was just inching up to the tree, about to roll into the pre-stage beam, and for whatever reason he double-bulbed me. I decided to sit there and compose myself before I advanced any further forward. It was nothing.
 
"I sat there for a few extra moments, because I like to be ready to let the clutch loose even before I pre-stage,” he said. “So I got ready and figured out what I was going to do before rolling in. Unfortunately, he still got me off the tree, but that's racing.”
 
Tonglet had a .031-second reaction time against Arana’s .061.
 
“What I heard later about Jerry going crazy at my dad and the words exchanged at the starting line after we left was unfortunate,” Arana Jr. said. “It wouldn't have mattered, anyway, because my bike went into neutral during the run. That had never happened before, so we'll fix it and move on."
 
He said he is just going to dwell on his own quest for a first series crown to match the one his father earned in 2009.
 
Maybe the incident was simply a misunderstanding. Either way, it’s a moot point, for Tonglet did defeat Arana, with a 6.945-second elapsed time at 194.44 mph on the Nitro Fish Suzuki to Arana Jr.’s 7.104, 183.54 on a misbehaving Lucas Oil Racing TV Buell.
 
"We are right there. We have a good, fast bike, and I guess that's why people are playing games,” Arana Jr. said. "We went to the semis again and stayed in third place in the points so we're still right in the mix with four races to go. It's vitally important to keep going further than the second round every race. We've been doing that pretty much every time out this year, so now we need to work on finishing the deal and getting some wins down the stretch.”
 
Race winner and points leader Eddie Krawiec has a 71-point advantage over No. 2-ranked Tonglet. Arana Jr. is in third place, 18 points behind Tonglet.
 
The whole confrontation amused Krawiec.
 
“It looked like a staging battle. L.E. did what he thought he wanted to do. I thought it was great. I was in the water box, cheering. I was yelling and screaming, because I thought it was a really cool thing. The same thing with the Pro Stock cars in the first round, with [Alex] Laughlin and Matt Hartford. To see stuff like that, that’s the unique thing about this. This is NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing. There are two individuals on the starting line. They set their own destiny. You can play games. You can do whatever you want. Really, it’s: How can you knock your competitor out of [his] mind set? For me, I try to race clean, but I know my competitor. I have a thing in the back of my head, like, ‘I got an idea what they’re going to do.’”
 
At this race last year, he taunted Angelle Sampey, telling her that he was going to “chop her head off and watch it roll down the track.” Of course, that was all hyperbole and symbolic silliness, but, as Krawiec said Sunday, “This is a big mental game out here. And I think when you pull your program together and you’re at that level mentally, where you can play games with others and not screw up, that’s what kind of sets you above everybody else.”
 
Of Sunday’s flap, he said, “I don’t know if the W.A.R. team and the Arana team are going to be hugging in the pits right now. But really, that’s what this sport needs [honest emotion]. We really need to be able to run that direction. We are not friends on the starting line. Against my own teammate, I want to whup him just as bad as he wants to whup me. I mean, there’s points involved; there’s everything involved. But we know when we take our helmets off at the other end, we both have respect for each other.”
 
Several years ago, Savoie teased the Vance & Hines Screamin’ Eagle team, calling them “Screamin’ Chickens.” Krawiec took offense and fired back a salvo of his own. So he was just as caught up in a situation similar to Sunday’s. And later Savoie said he regretted behaving in a way that didn’t reflect his true respect for the class dominators and that didn’t reflect his own true spirit.
 
So when the dust settles from this dust-up at Reading (which was nothing on the order of the Dougzilla drama in 2002 between Doug Herbert and Clay Millican’s former team owner, Peter Lehman) the Pro Stock Motorcycle class will settle back into its rhythm – until the next outburst.