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MEMPHIS, post race:CMKXtreme Machine Funny Car driver Jeff Arend saw his chances for his first round win of the season go up in smoke at the 17th annual O’Reilly NHRA Mid-South Nationals at Memphis Motorsports Park. Arend lost a close first round battle against Tim Wilkerson and will go into the 50th annual Mac Tools NHRA U.S. Nationals on Labor Day weekend hunting for his first victory of the year.

Hundreds of enthusiastic Tennessee drag racing fans were lined up at the gate waiting to get in Sunday morning, over seven hours before the beginning of professional eliminations. The O’Reilly Mid-South Nationals marked the 31st time that Arend has qualified for an NHRA national event in Funny Car in 35 career starts. He entered eliminations after qualifying in the No. 13 position for his 12th race of the season with a 4.985 at 286.32 mph. The CMKXtreme Machine pilot squared off against Tim Wilkerson in the first round, the first time the pair has raced against each other since the NHRA event in Columbus in 1996.

The conditions were hot and humid in Memphis when Arend and Wilkerson pulled into the staging beams for their first round match up. Arend left the starting line first on Wilkerson with a .066 reaction time. The CMKXtreme Machine Corvette was marching toward the finish line when the car starting smoking the tires just before half-track. Arend pedaled the throttle but the car failed to hook up and Wilkerson drove by him for the victory with a 5.062 at 296.89 mph. Arend rolled across the finish line in 5.581-seconds at 203.46 mph.

“Overall the weekend went pretty good,” said Arend after the first round. “We tried testing a few things and they worked well but we broke a blower belt and then we had a fuel pump problem and that put us behind the eight ball. We felt like the car was running well and going into the first round we figured we needed to run in the 4.90’s. I had a good reaction time and we were ahead at half-track but we overpowered the track at that point. If you look at the ladder you’ll see that not many cars got down the right lane with any speed.”

Arend will finish his weekend with a call-in interview to the nationally syndicated motorsports radio show ‘SpeedFreaks’, which will air live across the nation at 7 PM PST Sunday evening. For a list of the radio stations that broadcast the show in your area, visit their website at www.SpeedFreaks.tv.