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POMONA, Sunday: CMKXtreme Machine Funny Car driver Jeff Arend lost in the opening round of eliminations on Sunday at the 45th annual CARQUEST Auto Parts NHRA Nationals at Pomona Raceway. Arend exited early after running a career-best elapsed time in his special one-race themed car called The Trader during qualifying.

After rain canceled all of Fridays qualifying, Arend made his second lap of the weekend on Saturday. The Trader Pontiac Firebird scorched the Pomona Raceway to record a 4.797 at 312.71 mph, a career-best elapsed time for Arend. “That was the first time the car made a full run and we were very excited.” said Arend. “The Monte Carlo body is 45 pounds lighter than the Firebird and we plan to run it in Phoenix so we're working hard on improving our performance.”

Arend entered eliminations qualified 10th and he and Pedregon were the second to last pair to race during the first round. The weather was cool and overcast when the pair rolled to the starting line. Arend, one of best drivers in the class on the starting line, left first at the flash of green with a .083 to .108 reaction time. Arend was running side by side with Pedregon when The Trader car started to overpower the track and began to smoke the tires, handing the win to Pedregon.

Arend was thrilled with his team’s performance over the weekend. “Considering we’ve only made a few runs on our new Murf McKinney car, we were very pleased. It’s going to take some more runs to get it fully dialed in but when we do the CMKXtreme Machine will be a serious contender. I told Urban Casavant that we would give him and the CMKX shareholders something to get excited about this season and that’s the direction we are headed in.”