
TD Banknorth 250 notebook
MacDonald not really an outlaw at all
PORTLAND, Maine -- Eyes may pop open when they see Grimm Racing pull into a pit area, but driver Eddie MacDonald of Rowley, Mass., doesn't think he's an outlaw in the true definition of the word.
Two decades ago, an outlaw implied someone who wasn't affiliated with a particular series or race track but was instead interested only in chasing bigger paydays. MacDonald is firmly entrenched as a NASCAR Camping World East Series driver, and he's got a win at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last month to prove it. Instead of being an "outlaw" at this weekend's 35th TD Banknorth 250, MacDonald is just part of a team looking to win. "We don't get to run like this too much, just because we're so busy (with the East Series)," MacDonald said on Monday at the annual TD Banknorth 250 media day. "Everybody (on the team) works on both cars for both series. I wish we had some time to run some more races in some other cars, too." Typically, MacDonald and Lachance roll their Late Model out on the day of a race and just take their chances with it. This weekend, MacDonald said, they're doing just a bit more prep work on the car. "This is a big one for us," he said. "We wanted to win at Loudon and win the '250," and we already won at Loudon." MacDonald won an American-Canadian Tour at Oxford last season, and he's been in contention for more wins at Oxford this season. He goes into the weekend as one of two clear-cut favorites. Ricky Rolfe is the other. "It's neat, especially for this race," MacDonald said. "It's nice to be a favorite, and hopefully we'll run good. I hope we can win." ***** LUCK HAS BEEN a fleeting thing for Auburn driver Travis Stearns. Good luck, anyway. The second-year Late Model driver rebounded from a disastrous crash at Oxford on May 17, only to come back the next week and win for the first time in his career. But it's been nothing but bad luck since. "If there's been a wreck, we've found it," Stearns said. "We finally found something wrong with it, and I hope it's all behind us now. We're just back to not even worrying about points, just trying to go for wins." Stearns got his first taste of bad luck in last year's Oxford 250. "The draw worked out good last year," said Stearns, who picked the pole position in the first heat in his inaugural '250' try. "It was after that that everything went bad." Stearns leaked oil on his tires early on, taking him out of the heat race before finally blowing his engine in a consolation round. ***** KURT HEWINS, WHO will drive for Conrad Childs, is the only driver not named Ricky Rolfe to win a Late Model feature at Oxford since May. Rolfe and Joey Polewarczyk are the two ACT winners at the track this season. ... There are 115 cars entered in the '250' as of last Saturday. ... Rolfe, who is a fabricator at Race Basics in Andover, said he will drive several different cars during Saturday's practice sessions as he tries to get some of the company's clients dialed-in setup-wise.
Posted at 10:45 p.m. by TBarrett