{"id":1604,"date":"2009-07-08T13:49:41","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T13:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maineracer.com\/wp\/?p=1604"},"modified":"2009-07-08T13:49:41","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T13:49:41","slug":"thompson-is-a-welcome-challenge-for-macdonald","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/2009\/07\/thompson-is-a-welcome-challenge-for-macdonald\/","title":{"rendered":"THOMPSON IS A WELCOME CHALLENGE FOR MacDONALD"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When the green flag waves over Thompson International Speedway for<br \/>the NASCAR Camping World Series East&#39;s Full Fender Frenzy on Saturday, July<br \/>11th, Eddie MacDonald will be ready to challenge for the win. The famed<br \/>speedway has been a favorite track for the Rowley, Mass. driver, posting the<br \/>2005 season ending victory to accompany a number of solid runs during his<br \/>career.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; MacDonald feels confident the Grimm Construction Chevy will be<br \/>strong in the 100-lap event saying, &quot;We are bringing the car that we won<br \/>with at Thompson in 2005.&nbsp; Rollie and the crew have really worked hard to<br \/>prepare the car starting even before Loudon. With everything in place now<br \/>that we are in our full second year with Rob Grimm, we can focus on getting<br \/>the car ready for the next race and not have to worry about fixing it to get<br \/>to the next track. That has really been a big help for our program.&quot;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The race for the championship is well within the grasp of the team<br \/>with five races remaining on the schedule on tracks that have been good for<br \/>MacDonald. &quot;We are only 18 points behind Lavender for the lead so this is an<br \/>important race for us. If we can qualify up front and stay up front, we<br \/>should be competing for the win at the end. Our goal at the beginning of the<br \/>season was to contend for the championship and I feel we can put ourselves<br \/>in a position to do that with a strong run. I really love running at<br \/>Thompson. It is like two drag strips with high-banked turns and is very<br \/>fast. The spec engine we run now gives us enough horsepower to get off the<br \/>turns and crank it up down the long straights. This race should be a lot of<br \/>fun.&quot;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; MacDonald has qualified well in the past, starting third in last<br \/>year&#39;s Full Fender Frenzy but early handling issues and a late-race flat<br \/>tire produced a 15th place finish. MacDonald expects much better results<br \/>this time around saying, &quot;Last year we brought the Loudon car and I&#39;m not<br \/>sure if the longer wheel base was responsible for our handling issues but we<br \/>know what this car can do. We know we are capable of running up front and<br \/>Rollie knows how to set-up the car so it will be there at the end. I just<br \/>have to take car of the tires and we should be good.&quot;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Rob Grimm&#39;s first race with the team was the 2007 event at Thompson<br \/>that nearly ended with a top five finish. &quot;We were running sixth with four<br \/>laps to go and I had the car to get a couple of more positions but<br \/>unfortunately we got spun out coming out of turn four. But Rob liked what he<br \/>saw in the team and things have only gotten better since that race. I would<br \/>really like to win this for Rob, as well as NEMO New England Mechanical<br \/>Overlay that has been with us for years.&quot;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Qualifying for the Full Fender Frenzy will begin at 4:15 on Saturday<br \/>with the green flag waving at 7:00 pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When the green flag waves over Thompson International Speedway forthe NASCAR Camping World Series East&#39;s Full Fender Frenzy on Saturday, July11th, Eddie MacDonald will be ready to challenge for the win. The famedspeedway has been a favorite track for the Rowley, Mass. driver, posting the2005 season ending victory to accompany a number of solid [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nascar-kn-pro-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}