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News
Releases Arend qualifies 11th in first visit DENVER, Saturday: Jeff Arend qualified for his sixth consecutive race and for the eighth time this season at the 25th annual Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals. In his first career appearance at Bandimere Speedway Arend qualified the CMKXtreme Machine Funny Car in the No. 11 position and will face Tommy Johnson Jr. in the first round on Sunday for the second consecutive race. Arend and CMKX Pro Stock Bike rider Connie Cohen started the weekend with a visit to the pediatric wing of Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center in downtown Denver on Friday morning. The pair went room to room visiting with children, signing autographs, posing for photographs and handing out CMKX souvenirs. The CMKXtreme Machine is running the colors of the sports energy drink Go Fast for the Mopar Mile-High Nationals. The Go Fast company headquarters are based in the Denver area and the one-race graphics package will feature the company’s logo on a bright red and blue background. CMKX Diamonds Chairman of the Board, Urban Casavant, was on hand in Denver along with dozens of CMKX shareholders. “We’re excited to be here in Denver with Jeff Arend driving the CMKXtreme Machine Firebird and Casavant Mining as a major associate sponsor on Jim Dunn’s Funny Car. We plan to race the rest of the 2004 POWERade season and well into the future supporting both teams.” Unfortunately rain wiped out both rounds of professional qualifying on Friday, leaving everyone with only two chances to qualify for Sunday’s eliminations. The pressure was on as Arend rolled to the starting line with the awesome Go Fast graphics on the CMKXtreme Machine Firebird. In his maiden voyage with the Pontiac body, Arend roared to a 5.112 at 280.43 mph to finish the first session in the No. 9 qualifying position. Arend improved to a 5.038 at 300.46 mph on his second qualifying attempt but the parachutes on the CMKXtreme Machine failed to deploy until the Canadian native was almost to the end of the track. The car went off the pavement and came to rest in the sand trap at the end of the track. Arend emerged unhurt with only minor damage to the Pontiac Firebird body. “The Firebird has the chutes in a different location than on
the Corvette we were running,” said Arend. “Things happened
so fast in these cars, I’m not sure if I reached up to where
the parachute lever used to be or not. I hit them once and they didn’t
come out and by the time I hit them again and they deployed it was
too late to stay out of the sand. The car doesn’t look too bad
and I’m sure we can fix it but we might go back to the Corvette
body tomorrow. Right now I’m just happy to be racing tomorrow.”
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