<img src="http://www.nitromater.com/gallery/files/5/j_arend07_343561.jpg" alt="j_arend07_343561" align="right"borders="0"/>
Jeff Arend matched his teammate almost perfectly during Saturdays first session, by improving to a 4.865, and then matched him again by smoking the tires short of half-track on his final pass. In the end, Arend landed 10th, and will face Scott Kalitta in round one.
"Del and I both stepped up in Q3, but once we saw some of the other numbers out there, it was pretty obvious we had left a bit on the table," Arend said. "We didn't want to do that in Q4, but we both overstepped it a little. It was close to making it, but it just drove into tire spin out there. It was a weird day out here, all the way around. When we came to the track, it was cool and overcast, and it was pretty easy to believe it was going to stay that way. Then, it rained a couple of times before we ran, and once during the Funny Car session, but it never really set in and before you knew it the clouds were all gone and the sun was just baking us and the track. It was really hot out there for the last one.
"Tomorrow, the weather man is going to control what we run. If it's like this again, you'll see some tire smoke and some 4.85s, but if the forecast is true, and it cools of 10 or 12 degrees, you could be needing 4.78s to win anything out here. The track is very good, so it's just a matter of the conditions."
AREND TO RACE FROM 10th SPOT
Jeff Arend matched his teammate almost perfectly during Saturdays first session, by improving to a 4.865, and then matched him again by smoking the tires short of half-track on his final pass. In the end, Arend landed 10th, and will face Scott Kalitta in round one.
"Del and I both stepped up in Q3, but once we saw some of the other numbers out there, it was pretty obvious we had left a bit on the table," Arend said. "We didn't want to do that in Q4, but we both overstepped it a little. It was close to making it, but it just drove into tire spin out there. It was a weird day out here, all the way around. When we came to the track, it was cool and overcast, and it was pretty easy to believe it was going to stay that way. Then, it rained a couple of times before we ran, and once during the Funny Car session, but it never really set in and before you knew it the clouds were all gone and the sun was just baking us and the track. It was really hot out there for the last one.
"Tomorrow, the weather man is going to control what we run. If it's like this again, you'll see some tire smoke and some 4.85s, but if the forecast is true, and it cools of 10 or 12 degrees, you could be needing 4.78s to win anything out here. The track is very good, so it's just a matter of the conditions."
