AREND TO MAKE NHRA SEASON DEBUT IN VEGAS DRIVING RUSSO FC
Jeff Arend will make his 2018 NHRA nitro Funny Car debut at the Denso Spark Plugs Four-Wide Nationals April 6-8 at The Strip in Las Vegas in a familiar ride.
Arend will be driving again in the Funny Car owned by Peter and Helen Russo.
“They live in Australia and they like to go to two, three, four (NHRA) races a year and it just depends on their schedule and they decided they wanted to go to this one,” Arend said.
Arend last drove for the Russos for the final two races of the 2017 season – Las Vegas and Pomona, Calif. The veteran driver also is no stranger to four-wide racing as he competed at the Four-Wide Nationals in Charlotte, N.C., several times while driving for Kalitta Motorsports and then Jim Dunn.
“I’m been looking forward to this opportunity,” Arend said. “Obviously, it’s going to be our first race of the year, but the car has been running really well lately and we qualified a bunch of times in row. The goal is still to go up there and run a 3, but that’s going to depend on track conditions. We will try and go up there and make the first or second run and get solidly in the field, and then see if we can run a little bit quicker after that. Mike Smith and I will kind of co-tune the car together. We have a good game plan for the first run in Vegas.”
Arend acknowledged the Four-Wide aspect of the event adds a different wrinkle.
“Staging is a little bit different, because if you are in the No. 2 or No. 3 lane you actually look at the opposite side of the tree that you are normally used to,” he said. “I kind of figured that out a long time ago. It still seems to confuse some people, but it is not super hard. When you’re racing, especially in qualifying it is not really a big deal, because it just looks like a normal track, you can’t see the other two cars anyway.”
The Strip at Las Vegas Speedway is a completely new surface – all four lanes – and Arend is eager to see how things play out from a traction standpoint.
“Vegas is brand-new surface and none of the lanes have been raced on,” Arend said. “I’ve seen (photos) on Facebook and they have lots of rubber on all four lanes and what I’ve read they raced some cars on (lanes) 1 and 2 and cars on (lanes) 3 and 4, so they are all going to get the same amount of rubber hopefully.”