Eric’s father Scott, a class sponsor and veteran bike owner, was beside himself with excitement and literally giggling over the performance by his son, the bike, and tuner Owens. See an interview Eric and Owens in this video:

Class sponsor Kevin Gilham of Lectron was stoked with the debut performances of two of his new products, including the 52-50 carbs on McKinney’s bike. “These are very big carbs,” laughed Gilham. “I worked with Rick Ward to make an extra big cylinder head to accept these carbs. I wasn’t sure they would run them at this race, but they wanted to take advantage of these on the quarter mile.”

In the eighth mile Pro Comp class, Ryan Schnitz led Q1 with a 4.09 sporting brand new Lectron EFI throttle bodies on his HTP Performance Hayabusa. HTP only received the new throttle bodies and fuel rail on Thursday before the race. “We have a couple of new generations of these coming out in 2013,” promised Gilham.

Eperjesi wasn’t too disappointed with the $2,000 runner-up purse plus $1000 in contingencies he took home. “I thought the class was AWESOME!” said Shane. “I’d like to think Dan (Wagner of DTM Performance) for making all of this possible for all of us. Also want to thank the rest of the companies for the sponsorship, ‘cause without ALL of y'all this would not have been possible.

“The performance of the class was unbelievable, with everyone running so close to each other. As far as my performance, I was really happy to run in the 50's. I struggled in qualifying with a bad tire, then final qualifying I thought I was done when my battery went bad and had a massive backfire. I am a low budget guy with one motor. I had to pull the motor Saturday night and repair it to make it up for first round, and I want to give a big thanks to Ed Grothus for staying up with me Saturday night to help me.

“When I won first round I knew I had Scott (Gray) second round and he was number 1 qualifier. I knew I had to be more aggressive with the tune-up but didn't want to beat myself by making a bad call. That was my lucky round when he went red. Then got a little more aggressive in the semi to run my career best of 6.56 to beat Rick Perry. For the finals I knew I could not out-run Eric so I just changed the tune up a little with the help of Joe and it worked for my career best of 6.53. I knew I had to get up on the tree against Eric and I had a .010 to his .008. I did all I could do and I was HAPPY!”