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COLUMBUS, pre-race: Jeff Arend enters this weekend's 40th annual Pontiac Excitement NHRA Nationals still amazed at the transformation the 41-year-old has experienced over the past two and a half months. The story surrounding his sudden and successful return to the NHRA Funny Car wars this season reads like a quick fix dinner recipe. Find a new sponsor with plenty of funding, hire a veteran crew chief, buy and prepare a complete Funny Car operation in two weeks, update your license and start racing.

It was just 10 weeks ago that Arend formed the CMKXtreme Machine Funny Car team with the support of CMKM Diamonds founder and Chairman of the Board, Urban Casavant. From the moment Casavant made the decision to back Arend's racing efforts, the Canadian native has been working overtime to assemble the people and equipment needed to race successively in the most competitive field of fuel floppers the class has ever seen.

With his sponsorship secured, Arend sought out one of the most important pieces of his 300-mph puzzle, a competent crew chief. Arend's first choice was veteran Paul Smith, the same man who wrenched him to his only national event victory when the pair pulled off the upset of the season by winning the Funny Car title at the 1996 Keystone Nationals.

"I earned my fuel Funny Car license through Paul and he was the guy who gave me my first chance," said Arend. "I always said that if I ever hooked up with a major sponsor Paul would be the first person I called, and he was. He did a tremendous job in preparing the car to race in Las Vegas with just two weeks notice. I think we set a record for setting up a racing operation from scratch in just 14 days, but it's all been worth the hard work."

Since his return, Arend has qualified the CMKXtreme Machine Corvette for four races in five starts. He reset his career-best performance numbers with a run of 4.844-seconds at 318.77 mph in Chicago. While the CMKX team continues to jell and Smith gets a handle on the tune up with the new Goodyear tire, Arend is confident that winning rounds is just around the corner.

"Just to reach the point we're at right now, given the amount of time we had to build this team, has been tremendous. The CMKX team is headed in the right direction and soon we'll be giving these other team's nightmares."

And winning a national event will be the final ingredient in Jeff Arend's racing recipe.