Eddie MacDonald and the Grimm Racing Team’s nineteenth place finish in the K& N Pro Series East race in the South Boston 150 was a disappointment for the driver who was sixth fastest in practice and ran steadily in the top ten for most of the event. MacDonald completed the race two laps down when black flagged by officials for nose damage late in the race.
The #71 Grimm Construction Chevy was running eighth on a lap 117 restart when the trouble began according to MacDonald, “The #16 slammed into the rear of my car on the restart knocking me sideways. He then drove under me and the #60 made it three wide on the outside. When we got to the turn one I
started to back out when the other two pinched me in causing the nose to buckle. Then they slammed into each other but the damage was already done to my car. We were not great but we had a top ten car. Then we got called in to fix the nose and that cost us two laps. I didn’t think the damage was bad enough to get black flagged especially since we were running in the top ten with not that many laps to go.”
In the first practice MacDonald posted the sixth fastest time but ended up qualifying fourteenth saying, “The car was good during practice and I was very happy with it. We were a little late getting to tech and then got held up there and we were qualifying early so we didn’t even have time to make air pressure adjustments before hitting the track. We had our race pressures in the tires so obviously we were not going to qualify well. We were okay starting fourteenth since we knew we would move up through the pack and we
did.”
By lap 17 MacDonald moved into the eleventh position then ran in the tenth spot from lap 35 to lap 85. A lap 115 caution found MacDonald running in eighth with a top five finish in his sights but it was not to be saying,
“The car was okay and we were in a position to move up in the closing laps but our day, and car, got ruined through no fault of our own. I hate it for the team who works so hard and Rob Grimm, our owner, to have to bring in a wrecked car and a lousy finish. We knew we did not have the car to compete for the win but we knew we had a shot at a good finish and that was taken from us.”
The K&N Pro Series East will travel to Richmond International Speedway for its inaugural race as part of the NASCAR Cup weekend with the race taking the green flag on Thursday, April 28.