When Jeff Arend came to the Mile-High Nationals this weekend, he had hopes of moving up in the Funny Car point standings.

That didn’t happen.

Arend lost in the first round to Cruz Pedregon and he remains in 11th place in the point standings with one race left – the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals Aug. 12-15 in Brainerd, Minn. – before the Countdown to 1 begins.

Tony Pedregon, who is 10th place in the points, also lost in the first round to Ron Capps.

When Jeff Arend came to the Mile-High Nationals this weekend, he had hopes of moving up in the Funny Car point standings.

That didn’t happen.

Arend lost in the first round to Cruz Pedregon and he remains in 11th place in the point standings with one race left – the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals Aug. 12-15 in Brainerd, Minn. – before the Countdown to 1 begins.

Tony Pedregon, who is 10th place in the points, also lost in the first round to Ron Capps.

Tony Pedregon has 733 points, Arenda 700 and Cruz Pedregon, Tony’s brother, is 12th at 652. Cruz made it to the semis at Bandimere Speedway before losing to John Force.

“We have that Norwalk Night Under Fire we’re doing this Saturday, and we have to find a different way to run our car,” Arend said. “We need to make our car run more consistently and go down the track and not smoke the tires in the same place every time. If we can fix that up, we have the budget and the team owner and the sponsors and I think we can do better than Tony or Cruz and we should being do better than Tony or Cruz. Everybody is frustrated and it’s just a matter of getting that car to go down the track and run that 4.20 run.”

Arend says his Kalitta Motorsports Funny Car is routinely smoking the tires between 250 feet and 330 feet.

Arend also realizes how critical the Norwalk, Ohio, Night Under Fire is going to be for his team.

“It’s a match race, so we will have two runs at night, but we can test all day,” Arend said. “We usually can get four test runs in, so we should be able to get six runs in that day. This test comes at a great time for us because we need to go testing. Our car is too much on the edge, we have to find a different way of running it.”

In addition to Arend, John Force confirmed he and his daughter Ashley Force Hood will be at the Norwalk Night Under Fire.

Speaking of Ashley, she was trying to forget her holeshot loss to Jack Beckman in the first round at the Mile-High Nationals.

“We just have to pack up and go to the next race,” Force Hood said. “Obviously, I was bummed, buts getting mental about it isn’t going to do anything. We will just try it again in Brainerd.”