International Raceway while participating in the final race for the K & N
Pro Series West. The Grimm Construction Chevy was running in the eighth
position when taken out with a hard crash into the turn one wall.
The race was marred with 11 caution flags for 49 laps including three red
flags in the 125 lap event on the mile oval. MacDonald was involved in the
ninth caution on lap 107 when the #2 car of Daryl Harr tried to make in
three wide in turn one with a bonzi move below the yellow line. The west
driver lost it and slid into MacDonald sending both cars up into the
MacDonald was okay but said, “That was two hard hits. I don’t know what the
#2 car was thinking. You can’t run three wide in that turn. The car is junk
now. It is just a shame because we qualified good and wanted to have a solid
finish. We didn’t have anything for the leaders but we were in position for
a top ten and possibly a top five but it was not to be.”
MacDonald ran a qualifying lap of 27.906 sec. (129 mph) that was good enough
to start fifth in the 40-car field. When the green flag waved MacDonald took
the fourth spot but it didn’t take long for the first caution flag to fly on
the second lap. After racing resumed the yellow flags flew regularly with
MacDonald saying, “It was really hard to get any kind of rhythm going with
all the flags. We were bouncing a bit and the car was free of but the green
flag run were not long enough to get the car settled in.”
MacDonald ran in the top eight until pitting for tires on caution lap 63
then began making his way back up through the pack. The Rowley, Mass. driver
managed to miss a couple of wrecks but was tagged in the right rear and spun
on lap 70. The crew repaired the damage and MacDonald restarted in the 25th
position. By lap 87 Eddie Mac was 13th and moving to the front. On lap 101
MacDonald was eighth and poised to make a run for a top five finish but his
night ended in turn one on lap 107.
“It was getting crazy out there with the laps winding down and I had to back
out a couple of times with guys pinching me. We were running three wide a
couple of times and you knew something was going to happen and unfortunately
it happened to us. It is a shame to come all this way and the only thing to
show for it is a wrecked racecar. We had fun up to that point. This track is
a lot of fun to drive and it is not anywhere near as similar to Loudon as we
thought. The dogleg on the back stretch makes it totally different that
anything we ever raced on. I just want to thank Rollie, the crew, and team
owner Rob Grimm for all the hard work and support, as well as, all our
sponsors and fans.”