Veteran nitro Funny Car driver Jeff Arend will be back in the cockpit for the final two races of the 2017 season – Las Vegas (Oct. 25-28) and Pomona, Calif. (Nov. 8-11).

Arend will be behind the wheel of the Funny Car owned by Peter and Helen Russo.

“This is definitely exciting for me to get to drive for them again,” Arend said. “They are great people to be around and they are very dedicated to the sport. Racing with the Russo’s reminds you why you liked racing. I probably will do 10 times more work with this team than I did with the other teams I’ve been with. I help with the crew guys and I usually do the clutch in the car myself and I’m tuning with Mike Smith. To me, it is really fun and if it runs good it is a pretty good accomplishment. I’m pretty sure there’s a 3 (second-run) in that car.”

Arend last drove the Russo’s Funny Car at the Las Vegas spring race, but did not qualify.

However, Arend qualified the Russo’s Funny Car No. 16 at the 2016 Las Vegas fall race with a 4.04-second elapsed time at 302.55 mph which anchored the quickest field to that point in Funny Car history.

“Unfortunately, earlier this year (at the Las Vegas spring race), we had some mechanical issues with the car and it just didn’t run like it was supposed to,” Arend said. “We just had a bunch of little stuff that hurt us. It is hard when you don’t have a full-time crew, and it would be awesome if we could go 3 seconds. That’s the goal and I know Mike Smith and I are going to get everything organized so we have all the parts ready so we can go up there and make the three or four qualifying laps that we to without having rebuild other stuff that we are already using on the car.”