News Releases

READING, pre-race: CMKXtreme Machine Funny Car driver Jeff Arend will return to the site of his only career NHRA Funny Car national event victory this weekend at picturesque Maple Grove Raceway for the 20th annual Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals. Arend won the event in 1996 driving as a hired gun for Paul Smith and now the pair return to the Maple Grove quarter-mile eager to regain their winning form.

Maybe the most surprising story about Arend's victory in '96 was the fact that he wasn't even scheduled to drive the Paul Smith Drag Racing School Funny Car that weekend, "I went down to Maple Grove just to watch the race with a couple of friends," recalled Arend. "About two hours before the first round of qualifying, Paul Smith said he didn't feel like driving and he told me to drive. The Canadian native, with only a handful of races in a nitro Funny Car under his belt, won the race in style. He left the starting line first on all four of his opponents, defeating Dean Skuza, Al Hofmann, Del Worsham and Tony Pedregon in the final round. All four races were side by side contests decided by less than a tenth-of-a-second and the victory was the biggest upset of the season. It was a defining moment for the future Funny Car star and it helped to launch a career that is still running strong today.

Fast forward to the 2004 season, where Arend enters the Lucas Oil Nationals riding an 11-race qualifying streak in the CMKX car. Arend has qualified for 13 races in 14 starts this season and the CMKXtreme Machine team are still working hard toward attaining their goal of a Top-15 finish in the POWERade Drag Racing Series season ending point standings. Still, the time for the team to start winning rounds during eliminations is at hand and they know it.

"It sounds redundant but we really have got a pretty good handle on our tune up for the CMKXtreme Corvette," said Arend. "We've been bitten by a lot of little things this season like brand new blower belts breaking and fuel pump failures, but it's the same kind of things all the teams go through and you just have to work through it. That's why they call it drag racing, if it were easy, everybody would be out here."