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SONOMA, qualifying: Jeff Arend qualified for his tenth race of the 2004 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing season on Saturday at the 17th annual FRAM Autolite NHRA Nationals at beautiful Infineon Raceway. The 41-year-old Canadian native qualified the CMKXtreme Machine Funny Car for his eighth consecutive national event in the No. 10 position and will face Eric Medlen for the second time this season in the opening round of eliminations on Sunday.

Arend and CMKXtreme Pro Stock Bike rider Connie Cohen visited the Hanna Boys Center in Sonoma prior to qualifying Friday morning. The facility has been open since the late 1930’s and has enjoyed great success for decades working with troubled youth. Arend and Cohen met with over 75 boys, sharing stories about drag racing while signing autographs, showing Arend’s in-car drag racing footage and handing out CMKXtreme souvenirs.

Professional qualifying began Friday afternoon at Infineon Raceway. Arend had the second best 60-foot time of the opening session on his first run, but the blower belt broke near half-track and the Canadian native slowed to a 7.029 at 118.04 mph to finish the first qualifying round in the No. 14 position. Arend improved dramatically on his second run in the CMKXtreme Machine Corvette, recording a 4.960 at 308.35 mph to move up five positions to the No. 9 spot for the 16-car field.

Arend made two more qualifying attempts in the CMKXtreme Machine Funny Car on Saturday. The car smoked the tires near the 500-foot mark on the first run, coasting to a 5.833 at 166.39 mph, and dropping one spot on the qualifying ladder to the No. 10 position. On his final qualifying run the CMKXtreme Machine starting skating around near half-track, so Arend wisely clicked it off early and rolled to a 5.833 at 166.39 mph, finishing qualifying in the No. 10 spot.

“We’ve been fighting some handling problems with the car the last few races,” said Arend, “and after we took the car to the scales we found out we were a lot further off than we realized. That’s one of the problems when you start racing part way through the season because you don’t have a chance to go over everything really well. Now that we’ve fixed the handling the car is definitely a lot easier to drive. And just like everything else we’re getting all of the bugs worked out and everything is going much better.”