Eddie MacDonald Making First Trip to Hickory for Easter Bunny

In his racing career, Eddie MacDonald has covered a lot of ground geographically on the East Coast, visiting his fair share of short tracks. But, there is one short track that is surprisingly missing from the list: Hickory Motor Speedway.

Granted, the Rowley, Massachusetts native runs the majority of his races in New England; usually in the Pro All Stars Series or American-Canadian Tour; but for most of its history PASS has run Hickory once or even twice a year, with the Easter Bunny Weekend becoming a staple of the season.

But indeed, this will be the first trip to the old North Carolina oval for ‘The Outlaw’.

“I’ve never been, looking forward to getting down there and checking the place out," MacDonald told Racing America. "This year everyone decided to come up with a plan that allowed us to go down there. We also wanted to get a jump on the season so that we’d be ready for Thompson, Loudon, and Stafford; see what we can learn with the car."

With a busy April planned, there will be a big focus on getting some speed in the new No. 17MA car the Eddie Lemieux owned team has acquired for 2022.

“We got a nice new FURY Racecar, I’m excited to work with all those guys in that program. But, we got all of our same sponsors back with EXIT Realty, Hancock Electric, Grimm Construction, O’Neil Builders, and HMS Motorsport. Going to be a great season.”

After high marks from PASS drivers in 2021 at Hickory, the Friday-Saturday Twin 150 format is back for Easter Bunny 2022 at Hickory. It is a format that plays to the learning curve for MacDonald, and could make him a big threat especially for Saturday.

“It’s going to be a challenge, we’re going to have to learn the car and the track all at once. Hopefully we’ll get things figured out pretty quick and see what we got, but it’s going to be quite the learning curve. Friday we might be looking more to get through it, of course you want to get through both the nights with no damage.”

Beyond the three PASS races in April, MacDonald will be running his usual pick and choose Outlaw-style schedule from May on. What those races are, you’ll have to check back in and find out.

“We’re just going to do whatever races look good to us. We’ll take a look as we go along, see what the guys want to do, and go on from there.”

Can’t make it to Hickory Motor Speedway this weekend? The Easter Bunny Twin 150’s will be live on Racing America this Friday at 7 p.m. ET and Saturday at 4 p.m. ET.