Eddie MacDonald scored a tenth place finish in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East/West combination race in the Graham Tire 150 at Iowa Speedway. Two West cars finished ahead of the Grimm Construction Chevy giving MacDonald eighth place East Series points. He currently sits in eighth place in the point’s race after four events.
“The car was really fast in the first practice running sixth and we were very happy with it,” said MacDonald. “We went out on old tires so we expected to be faster with new tires, but we were not. The car was very loose in qualifying and I didn’t know what happened. All of a sudden it didn’t handle anything like it did in practice. We lost some positions in the second practice but that was because all the other teams ran stickers. So qualifying the way we did was a real surprise.”
MacDonald started 18th in the race but could not get the car to turn saying, “The thing was so loose, we decided to pit during the caution on lap 38 because we had almost gone a lap down so we had to pit. Rollie and the crew tightened it up quite a bit and it got really good. At the halfway break on lap 75, we put on four new tires.”
Restarting in the 22nd position, MacDonald began moving through the field saying, “The car was very fast on the new tires and I was able to pass a lot of cars but after a while, it got really loose again. We pitted then discovered the right rear tire was really huge. That was the problem right along. We had been chasing the car the entire race and tightened it up quite a bit so now that we knew the problem we had to take out a lot of the adjustment we made earlier. We were running ninth at the end but the late race caution killed us. We were not too good on restarts so at the end I was just trying to hang on to tenth and not wreck the car when it got crazy with ten laps to go. If that caution didn’t happen we probably could have picked up a couple of more positions. It was just one of those strange nights.”
“We had a great finish here last year and thought we would again but it was not to be. I really enjoy racing here against the West guys and we get to do it again later this season, hopefully with a little bit better result. Rollie and the crew worked their tails off and I really appreciate all the hard work. My thanks go to Rob Grimm for making all of this possible and my thanks to a new sponsor, Kustom Vinyl for coming on board.”
The K&N Pro Series East returns to action at Bowman Gray Stadium on June 2.
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