McIntosh Kicks Off Ambitious 2019 Season with Saturday’s USAC Midget Shamrock Classic
Lonnie Wheatley, BIXBY, Okla. (March 7, 2019) – A prodigious season of racing action is in store for 16-year-old Cannon McIntosh of Bixby, OK. And it all begins with this Saturday’s USAC NOS Energy Drink National Midget “Shamrock Classic” at Du Quoin’s Southern Illinois Center.
The $4,000-to-win event that includes a potential $50,000 bonus features a star-studded field of more than 60 entries.
While this will be McIntosh’s first laps at the Southern Illinois Center aboard the Dave Mac Motorsports Toyota-TRD Spike No. 08 Midget, he has had a look at the 1/6-mile indoor clay oval and has a good idea of what to expect.
“It’s tight, I just have to keep my nose clean and get what I can,” McIntosh commented.
It marks the beginning of a 2019 schedule of approximately 75 races including the entirety of the Lucas Oil POWRi National Midget series schedule along with select USAC Midget events and several winged 360-ci ASCS Sprint Car starts.
“We’re trying to maximize the amount of racing and laps we can get this year,” McIntosh explains.
It builds upon the last two seasons in which McIntosh has posted top-ten finishes in POWRi West Midget points while also getting his initial laps in Sprint Car action. He has picked up a pair of POWRi West Midget feature wins along the way as well.
The experience has already begun to pay dividends, with the young shoe opening eyes at January’s Chili Bowl Nationals in Tulsa, OK, by racing to a fifth-place finish in his preliminary feature and then falling just three positions short of the championship feature among the field of 345 entries. And all this in his first Chili Bowl effort less than a month removed from his 16th birthday.
“Going into the Chili Bowl, we were really just hoping to make it into our prelim feature. We easily did that, then to get up there in the feature and hang with those guys felt really good,” McIntosh recalls after battling past former Chili Bowl champions Sammy Swindell and Tim McCreadie to post the fifth-place finish.
McIntosh proved to be for real, battling near a transfer position in his Saturday “B” Main.
“If the bottom had been a little better, I think we could have got there because our car was working so well there all week,” McIntosh explains. “We missed Rookie of the Year by one spot and missed the transfer by just three, so it was pretty successful for the first time.”
McIntosh gets one more race under a roof on Saturday at the Southern Illinois Center before action ramps up with the POWRi National Midget “Turnpike Challenge” in Oklahoma on March 21-24.
Along with Toyota-TRD, other marketing partners making the 2019 slate of events possible includes Sanders and Associates, Car and Fleet, Mobil 1, Speedway Engine Development, Best Graphics, Fieldhouse Gear, Precision Inspection, Panels by Smoke, Walker Performance, Sanders Wheels, American Discount Brake and Muffler, D&N Fabrication, Darling Ingredients, PJ’s and Hinds Family.
2019 Quick Stats: 2 races, 1 top-five, 1 top-ten.
Up Next: USAC NOS Energy Drink Nationals Midgets “Shamrock Classic” at Du Quoin’s Southern Illinois Center. Those unable to attend in person can catch the action live via PPV at https://www.floracing.com/.
Keep Track: Keep track of Cannon McIntosh’s on-track action including schedule and results at https://www.facebook.com/cmacracing/.
If you would like Cannon McIntosh Racing press releases e-mailed directly to you, send your e-mail address to Lonnie Wheatley at lonniewheatley@gmail.com.
