Eddie MacDonald's fortunes appeared to take a turn for the worse
halfway through the NASCAR Camping World Series East's Mohegan Sun 200 at
Lime Rock Park. While cruising along in the sixth position, the transmission
locked in fourth gear for the remainder of the race. MacDonald piloted the
Grimm Construction Chevy forward and into a second place run for the
green\/white checkered finish on the 86th lap.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
MacDonald joked about the stuck shifter saying, "I was hoping to have
an automatic because I hate shifting and this was the closest thing to an
automatic," before continuing, "It was really lugging down on the restarts
and the left and right handers in turns three and four but those were the
only spots that really hurt us. Everywhere else we were able to gain or
maintain."<\/p>\n
Two late race cautions forced the green\/white checkered finish with
MacDonald starting behind race winner Ryan Truex. On both restarts the #81,
#61, and the #44 ran inside and outside but MacDonald was able to hold onto
the second spot saying, "I was hoping we didn't have restarts at the end but
the car picked up speed even though it bogged down a bit at the green flag
and I was able to stay behind the #00 into turn one. The last one was really
hairy with cars flying all over the place and it is great to finish second."<\/p>\n
Crew chief Rollie LaChance planned to bring the #71 into the pits to
fix the stuck gear after attempts to work it loose inside the cockpit failed
but the team never got the chance when no caution flags flew until lap 71.
It was decided that it was too late in the race to pit, so MacDonald muscled
the car for the remaining 15 laps.<\/p>\n
"It would have been interesting if we were able to get it fixed. With
the car I had, I think we could have won the race. The car was great during
the race. Rollie and the crew did a great job making adjustments after our
practices. I just didn't like the way it was going so Rollie made the right
moves. I can't say enough about our team. They are all volunteers and do an
outstanding job every race. When you have people that dedicated and just
love racing, it really makes me try that much harder."<\/p>\n
MacDonald was seventh fastest in the first practice then falling to
thirteenth in the second and final one. He qualified ninth
(54.873sec\/100.377mph) then started eighth on the 1.53mile road course when
the #7 car went to the rear. MacDonald moved to fifth by the second caution
flag on lap 12 and was content to run there. "The #18 was flying so we were
just riding out there maintaining our position. We wanted to stop sometime
after lap 20 for fuel and then we were good to go but just before the
halfway mark the tranny got stuck in fourth gear and then the fun began,"
laughed MacDonald.<\/p>\n
Despite the mechanical problem, MacDonald was able to run in the sixth
position and into third by lap 67. The #18 was forced to the pits after
tangling with two lapped cars on the backside of the track. When the green
flag waved on the lap 77 restart, MacDonald was in the second spot and had
to hold off road course specialist Jason Holehouse. Another caution two laps
later forced the overtime.<\/p>\n
After the race MacDonald was quick to add, "None of this would be
possible without Rob Grimm and Ron and Becky Bennett from NEMO New England
Mechanical Overlay and all the other people who have helped so much. We have
two races left at Loudon and Dover and those are tracks we have run well at
so hopefully we can end the season contending for the championship. We are
in second place by 50 points and we've learned that anything can happen.
Just look at today."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eddie MacDonald's fortunes appeared to take a turn for the worsehalfway through the NASCAR Camping World Series East's Mohegan Sun 200 atLime Rock Park. While cruising along in the sixth position, the transmissionlocked in fourth gear for the remainder of the race. MacDonald piloted theGrimm Construction Chevy forward and into a second place run […]<\/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-1606","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\/1606","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=1606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}