Lucas Oil Buell rider Hector Arana Jr. was at his best for the 58th annual Mac Tools U.S. Nationals presented by Auto-Plus at Lucas Oil Raceway, but it wasn't enough to repeat as race winner.

Arana Jr. rode well in all three rounds in which he competed but came up about 6 feet short in the semifinals against eventual Pro Stock Motorcycle race winner Andrew Hines.

"I did everything in my power," Arana Jr. said. "I wish we could've gotten this bike to 60 foot a little bit better. We seemed to struggle with the track a little this weekend."

Arana Jr., who scored his first career victory at Lucas Oil Raceway last year, left first on all three opponents Sunday. In the first round, he had a .007-second reaction time against Mike Berry, and then outran him with a pass of 6.935 seconds at 192.44 mph.

Arana Jr. had a .014 light against L.E. Tonglet in a battle of the past two U.S. Nationals champions in the second round. Arana Jr. then pulled away with a pass of 6.981 seconds at 192.25 mph for the victory.

In the semifinals, Arana Jr. had the edge on Hines on the Christmas Tree (.026 to .038) but it wasn't enough to overcome Hines' run of 6.914 seconds at 193.10 mph. Arana's pass was 6.947 seconds at 192.93 mph.

"Overall, my shift points all day today have been awesome," Arana Jr. said. "The lights have been spot on. I did everything I could do. I just didn't have enough steam to stay in front of (Hines).

"All those runs, I popped the clutch and never saw those guys, even against Andrew. I went up there, I felt no pressure, I was amped up, and I was ready to play. I was ready to go have fun and win a race."

Arana ends the regular season third in the Pro Stock Motorcycle points standings as the series heads to Charlotte next weekend for the start of the Countdown to the Championship.

"We've already started working on making more power," Arana Jr. said. "We're pulling the heads off the motor and sending them to Larry (Morgan), and we're going to go home and completely go through this motor. We're going to try to squeeze everything we can out of this motor and hopefully get a championship."

Photo by Matt Polito