Arend Set to Deliver More Wins Coming Off Best Season Ever

(Photo by Brandon W. Mudd)

Native Canadian Jeff Arend, driver of the 8,000-horsepower, nitro-fueled DHL Toyota Camry Funny Car, completed the best season of his steering wheel-wrangling career last November at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona (Calif.). This weekend, Feb. 9-12, he and the DHL “Yella Fellas” Funny Car team return to the historic race track for the season-opening NHRA Winternationals in hopes of carrying their successful momentum into the 2012 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series.

Arend posted the best championship points finish of his career last year by finishing in eighth place in Full Throttle Funny Car points. He also earned a berth in the ultra-exclusive NHRA “playoffs”, the Countdown to the Championship, for the first time. The “flopper” veteran thinks No. 8 is great but he’s hoping for something in an even smaller size at the end of this season.

“It was very cool to put those No. 8 decals on our DHL Toyota Camry Funny Car for this season,” Arend, a 49-year old resident of San Dimas, Calif., said. “We had been competing under my competition license number (170) for the past couple of years, so we were very happy to switch those out after our first top ten finish.

“I think we have all of the puzzle pieces in place to be competitive enough to win at every event this year. I know everyone on our DHL team is really looking forward to getting out there and improving on what we did last year. Sure, finishing in eighth was awesome, but now we have our goals set even higher. I think we’ll have at least a top five Funny Car this year. We’re going to be right near the top of the pack all year and hopefully have a shot at the championship in November.

“It’s always a blast racing in Pomona. I live about five minutes away from the racetrack so it is right in my backyard. We always have a lot of friends and family come out to the track with us at Auto Club Raceway and cheer on the DHL Funny Car team. Hopefully we can hoist a Winternationals trophy for them all at the end of the weekend.”

Arend has posted three wins in eight final-round appearances in his 18-year Funny Car career. He took over the controls of the DHL Toyota Camry Funny Car for Kalitta Motorsports at the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals in 2008 after the tragic death of Scott Kalitta in a racing accident in June of that year