AREND STAYS 3rd, STAYS READY
Like the rest of the Funny Car class, Jeff Arend and his Checker, Schuck's, Kragen blue crew battled the conditions on Saturday. The mostly sunny day and warm temperatures took a great deal of the bite out of a record setting track, and when the clutch dust settled on Atlanta Dragway on Saturday, the only change in the order from Friday's night ladder was Gary Densham's move from 16th up to 14th. Densham's move set up the first-round pairing for Sunday, as Arend and Densham will now square off.
"We put a cylinder out on the first run, then it picked it back up and was charging for a while," Arend said. "It finally went sour and I lifted, just as the left-side headers dropped and scraping the track. On the final pass, the goal for us was to go end-to-end, to make sure we can do that when we come back out here tomorrow. We ran 4.864, which doesn't sound like much compared to the magic numbers that were going up on the board Friday night, but that was right there with most of the better runs in that session. It certainly gives us something to work with, going into Sunday.
"I'm sure Gary will be armed and ready. He's lost to my boss (Del Worsham) in the first round at the last two races, and he'll be looking to correct that against us. What we have to do is just run our race, and put our best number up there. If Gary and his guys beat that, they'll earn it. That's drag racing. All you can do is put your best lap on the board and see how that stacks up. Coming off our Friday night run, with the number three qualifying spot, you know we want to use that as a springboard to a big day, so that's what we'll try to do."
