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Jeff Arend made a solid pass during session No. 1, in his blue Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Impala, here at a packed Bristol Dragway. That run, and the time he earned (a 4.961 in the heat of the afternoon) was really only for positioning, going into the night session, and Arend knew he needed to step up to secure a sure spot in the field and give himself a solid chance to remain the driver with the longest active qualifying streak. His blue CSK machine was on a truly massive lap in the second session, and was incrementally far ahead of the quickest lap made on this day, but when the car made a hard move toward the center line and Arend could not bring it back, he lifted off the throttle to avoid hitting any timing blocks and he ended the day 17th. He will have to earn his way into the field, which currently sports a 4.949bump spot, during one of the two daytime sessions on Saturday, if he wants to extend his streak to 13th straight races.
"Man, I don't know what to say other than it was just ripping down there," Arend said. "It was running awesome, staying pretty straight, but not too long after half-track it faded to the right just a bit, and right after that it made a real hard move. It wasn't an issue of me not steering it back, I had the wheel turned to the left as far as it would go, even going so far as to move my right hand to an underneath position, to crank it to the max, but it just wouldn't come back. In those fractions of a second, when you're going that fast, you're not having a normal mental conversation with yourself in there, deciding what to do. You do it all on instinct and kind of sort it out later.
I knew, instinctively, that it was not coming back and that the next thing in front of us was going to be a timing block.
"If you hit one of those things at 300 or more, you're going to tear a lot of the front end off the car, so as much as I wanted to keep going, I lifted. It's just too bad, because it was clearly on its way to being No. 1 qualifier. Our incremental numbers were the class of the field, but it didn't want to go straight and 'could've been' doesn't earn you anything, including sympathy. We' ll just have to step up and get in the show tomorrow, that's all there is to it."
AREND'S STREAK ON THE LINE, AS "ONE THAT GOT AWAY" LEAVES HIM 17th
Jeff Arend made a solid pass during session No. 1, in his blue Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Impala, here at a packed Bristol Dragway. That run, and the time he earned (a 4.961 in the heat of the afternoon) was really only for positioning, going into the night session, and Arend knew he needed to step up to secure a sure spot in the field and give himself a solid chance to remain the driver with the longest active qualifying streak. His blue CSK machine was on a truly massive lap in the second session, and was incrementally far ahead of the quickest lap made on this day, but when the car made a hard move toward the center line and Arend could not bring it back, he lifted off the throttle to avoid hitting any timing blocks and he ended the day 17th. He will have to earn his way into the field, which currently sports a 4.949bump spot, during one of the two daytime sessions on Saturday, if he wants to extend his streak to 13th straight races.
"Man, I don't know what to say other than it was just ripping down there," Arend said. "It was running awesome, staying pretty straight, but not too long after half-track it faded to the right just a bit, and right after that it made a real hard move. It wasn't an issue of me not steering it back, I had the wheel turned to the left as far as it would go, even going so far as to move my right hand to an underneath position, to crank it to the max, but it just wouldn't come back. In those fractions of a second, when you're going that fast, you're not having a normal mental conversation with yourself in there, deciding what to do. You do it all on instinct and kind of sort it out later.
I knew, instinctively, that it was not coming back and that the next thing in front of us was going to be a timing block.
"If you hit one of those things at 300 or more, you're going to tear a lot of the front end off the car, so as much as I wanted to keep going, I lifted. It's just too bad, because it was clearly on its way to being No. 1 qualifier. Our incremental numbers were the class of the field, but it didn't want to go straight and 'could've been' doesn't earn you anything, including sympathy. We' ll just have to step up and get in the show tomorrow, that's all there is to it."
