The K&N Pro Series East race kicked off a busy weekend for the team with
MacDonald posting the fifth fastest speed in the practice and followed it up
with a fourth place run in qualifying. The Rowley, Mass driver maintained
the position early in the race then slipped back to ninth on lap 45 as the
car became tight. MacDonald restarted in second place on lap 51 after the
leaders pitted and held on to the spot until the caution on lap 74.
\n
<\/p>\n
MacDonald restarted in 22nd on lap 79 after pitting for tires and fuel then
began making his way to the front. On lap 85 the Grimm Construction Chevy
was tenth and with 15 laps to go, MacDonald was in sixth place then moved to
fourth when the two leaders took themselves out forcing the first
green\/white\/checker. MacDonald was in third when another crash caused a
second G\/W\/C attempt when the #9 car did not go on the first restart from
his second spot on the grid sending cars all over the track at the start
finish line. Officials then decided that the #71 car did not maintain speed
even though MacDonald slowed to avoid slamming into Swindell’s car that was
facing the wrong way on the track and placed him in the tenth position for
the final restart. MacDonald was able to gain four positions over the last
two laps.<\/p>\n
The finish pushed him into fifth place in the points with MacDonald saying,
“It is great that we moved back into the top five despite the tough day. The
car was tight the entire race and to have that call at the end really hurt
but we’ll take the finish and get ready for Dover next week. We want to
finish up strong there and it is one of our favorite places to race.”<\/p>\n
MacDonald and the crew prepared for their first Camping World Truck race in
what was considered an experiment. No one ever ran a “spec” engine in a
truck race so there was a lot of interest throughout the NASCAR community.
MacDonald hoped to run in the top 20 saying, “The engine is one of our East
engines and is a lot less horsepower than the teams running the trucks and
because it is lighter NASCAR added a 100 pounds of weight to our truck so it
will be tough but we’ll see how it goes.”<\/p>\n
MacDonald qualified 22nd and when the green flag waved it was evident the
added weight and less horsepower would play a major role in the race with
MacDonald saying, “We just couldn’t keep up with those guys on the restarts.
They had way more power than us. It took us a while to get going and the
truck was really tight like the East car so we were just hoping to maintain
our position which we did until we got taken out on lap 84 in turn one by
David Starr. That was the hardest I ever hit the wall and the official said
afterward it registered 3.9 g’s. The truck is pretty torn up and if we got
out of here without too much damage we were going to run at Martinsville but
now I don’t know if we will be able to get it fixed. It was a tough day but
it was fun to race with those guys.”<\/p>\n
MacDonald won the first ACT Invitational at NHMS last September and hoped to
repeat but it was not to be. Teams were placed on the starting grid
according to their performance ability and the Bank North 250 champion was
slated to start 23rd but a penalty was levied forcing MacDonald to start
33rd. After passing inspection both driver and crew chief Rollie LaChance
headed to the truck garage to prepare for that race. The remaining crew
jacked up the left side of the Late Model to attach the transponder. It was
at that time ACT officials measured the height of the right side and
determined it to be too low forcing the team to cut a quarter of a inch off
the bottom side panel and leveling the penalty.<\/p>\n
MacDonald said of the penalty, “I told them that when you jack up one side
of the car you just can’t measure it then. The car has to be re-set and then
you can measure it. We went through inspection once and it was okay. After
the race we measured it and it was an inch and a half higher than what is
mandatory. Starting back where we did was tough because we had to pass so
many cars that were running side by side and the car was tight just like the
East car and truck.”<\/p>\n
Despite the penalty, MacDonald drove the NEMO Pontiac from 33rd to sixth at the halfway mark of the sixty lap feature and into fourth with nine lapsremaining, Brian Hoar took the fourth position with six laps remaining giving MacDonald the fifth place finish.<\/p>\n
“It was a great weekend of racing for us and the crew did an incredible job
getting three vehicles ready,” said MacDonald after the race. “It was
amazing because we were really spread so thin. Everyone worked their tails
off and I really want to thank them for all the hard work. A number of other
people stepped in to help and we really appreciate it. We have great support
and we could not have done any of this without them.”<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eddie MacDonald and the Grimm Racing Team competed in three of the five feature races at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and their effort was rewarded with a sixth place finish in the K&N Pro Series East and a fifth place run in the ACT Invitational. The “experiment” in running a “spec” engine in the Camping […]<\/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-1657","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\/1657","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=1657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}