McDONALD DOES THE DOUBLE AT HEDNESFORD NATIONALS
Not for the first time, Rob McDonald found no problem in doing the almost ‘traditional’ double of winning the
World and National championships in the same season.
Coming just a month after the World Final it’s sometimes viewed as routine that the World champion will take the National too. It is far from a certainty though as the two events are run very differently.
World qualifying takes all year with the final grid determined by lap times.
The National is condensed into a weekend with multiple heats on Saturday determining the starting order for Sunday. That means one poor race can be the end of a driver’s realistic chances of victory.
The busy nature of the event means many teams actually prefer the Hednesford classic to the rather more drawn out Ipswich biggie. With his massively impressive pace, grasping pole was practically a given for McDonald and after that the victory was almost entirely predictable. That’s not to say it was easy though. Indeed, one of the heats was one of the races of the season, with fourwide battling eventually turning into a McDonald win, only for the steward to take it away again with a contact penalty.
But in the end pole was still the property of the Scot, the World champ making sure fellow front row man Billy Wood couldn’t interfere as they tore into lap one and that was the race won and lost right there. ‘Fast Bob’ won by half a lap and put every finisher up to third a lap down in the process. Wood ran second all the way with John Christie the last driver unlapped. GB