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COLUMBUS, Sunday: CMKXtreme Machine Funny Car driver Jeff Arend went out early at the 40th annual Pontiac Excitement NHRA Nationals at National Trail Raceway. Arend was defeated during the opening round of eliminations by Whit Bazemore after his car tossed the blower belt just past half track during the first round of eliminations.

Arend qualified the CMKXtreme Machine Corvette in the No. 15 position with a 4.967 at 309. 70 mph on his final qualifying attempt Saturday. That paired the 41-year-old Canadian native against current NHRA POWERade Funny Car point's leader Whit Bazemore in the opening round.

Arend and Bazemore were the fourth pair of Funny Cars to square off against each other on Sunday. Bazemore had a slight edge off the starting line and the CMKX Corvette was right along side him until the motor tossed the blower belt and went silent. Bazemore took the victory with a 4.863 at 313.58 mph to Arend's 5.258 at 218.58 mph.

"That was the first time we were able to get down the race track on the brand new Goodyear tire," said Arend after the run. "We weren't able to make it down the track with the new tire on our first couple of runs this weekend. We decided to put the old set of tires we had on the car and we made a run good enough to qualify for eliminations. We thought we'd try the new tires again today and we figured we'd run somewhere in the 4.90 to 4.95 range and not hurt ourselves. Unfortunately the blower belt broke. The car was on track to run a low 4.90, so I don't think we had enough to match Bazemore."

Arend and the CMKXtreme Machine team will now head straight to Englishtown, New Jersey for the next stop on the 2004 NHRA POWERade tour. "The CMKX team has been working very hard and we're going into the next event with a good idea of what kind of tune up we need for the new tire. This is the third race in a row that we've had the same crew and they're really working well together. We've come a long way in short time and we're going to get that first round win soon."