Eddie MacDonald scored his first ever Camping World Series East pole
for the Edge Hotel 150 at Adirondack International Speedway with a time of
16.739 sec. (107.533mph). The Grimm Construction Chevy led the field with
101 laps but the handling went away late in the race causing MacDonald to
slide back to tenth.
"It was so great to win the Coors Light Pole Award. We have been on the
outside pole a number of times but this was my first in the Camping World
East. I really thought we had a good chance to win this thing but the right
front tire was just used up at the end. When I turned it in the corner, it
just wanted to go straight."
When the green flag waved, MacDonald was able to establish a four-car
length lead was not seriously challenged according to the driver, "I didn't
have anybody pushing me but we started off tighter than we should have been
and that started using up the right front tire. I was just riding around out
there. When we got to a hundred laps I thought we could run the last fifty
the same way but it gave out at the end. It would have been nice to win it
from the pole but it just didn't happen."
Matt Kobyluck's #40 took the lead from MacDonald on lap 51 but the #71
was able to re-take the top spot eleven laps later. By lap 96, MacDonald and
Jody Lavender were pulling away from the field with the #88 taking first on
lap 112 with MacDonald saying, "At that point we were really starting to
slide in the turns. Later on, when I started racing the #00, for second it
felt like I was on ice. At that point I just started going backwards. It's
one of those things that happen. We were hoping for the win so it was
disappointing to end up tenth."
The team will now prepare for the road course race at Lime Rock Park on
August 15th and MacDonald feels confident the team can improve from third in
the points with a solid run saying, "We had a pretty good car but the engine
let go but we had a decent run in the back-up car. Hopefully we will
definitely have a much better run this year and try to improve our position
in the points."