Brownstown Speedway, along with Twin Cities Raceway Park in Vernon, will begin their 2019 racing seasons tonight.
At Brownstown, the 22nd Annual Indiana Icebreaker will be contested featuring the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series with a $12,000-to-win event. The track has announced that its start times have been moved up for today. Gates will open at noon, with a drivers meeting scheduled for 4:30 p.m. and hot laps to follow at 5 p.m. Also racing at Brownstown tonight will be modifieds and pure stocks. For more information, call 812-358-5332 or visit brownstownspeeedway.com.
At Twin Cities, the season opener will include 410 non-wing sprints, 305 RaceSaver sprints, MMSA mini sprints, pure stocks and hornets. For more information, call 812-569-1982 or check online at twincitiestrack.com.
McIntosh takes USAC midget event
Cannon McIntosh’s grace under fire was demonstrated literally and figuratively in a multitude of manners in the fourth annual “Shamrock Classic” on March 9 at the Southern Illinois Center in Du Quoin, Illinois. It was McIntosh’s first career win in the USAC National Midget division.
A fuel leak during hot laps ignited the Bixby, Oklahoma, driver’s ride, giving the 16-year-old driver a scare he won’t soon forget and forcing him to borrow crew member Grady Chandler’s fire suit for the remainder of the night as a replacement.
“I got blisters on my ankle right now,” McIntosh pointed out. “That was definitely the scariest moment of my life. I had flames up to my eyes and couldn’t grab my belt. I was starting to freak out a little bit. There’s a great crew around here to put the fire out. God was on my side there.”
In turn, the flames lit a fuse under the young driver, and after relinquishing the lead to the defending series champ and reigning race winner, he refused to cave-in to the pressure, snookering Logan Seavey on a Lap 30 restart and completed the remaining 21 laps at the point to win his first career USAC feature in just his second series start.
By accumulating the most passing points throughout the evening, McIntosh earned the pole for the 50-lap feature. However, an opportunity arose that for some may have seemed too enticing to turn a blind eye to with a $50,000 bonus awaiting him if he could start from the tail and win the feature.
Yet, McIntosh turned down the opportunity, basically intimating that while the money is nice, he came here to win.
“Fifty-grand would be awesome,” McIntosh admitted. “It would’ve been great to win all that money, but to me, winning that race was the money.”
Instead, McIntosh took the pole and, from Lap 1, showed he wasn’t gun shy next to outside front row starter Seavey, instantly rocketing out to a half-straightaway advantage in the opening laps as he quickly closed in on the tail end of the field.
With the bottom occupied, McIntosh had to figure whether to stay in line and try to sneak by on the bottom or snake around the outside to build his lead as Seavey made his blitzkrieg to the front, first around Andrew Layser on the 14th lap before clamping down on McIntosh.
A Turn 4 tangle on Lap 29 sent Matt Veatch on his lid. He would restart. But that set up a Lap 30 restart with Seavey and McIntosh running 1-2. McIntosh wasn’t exactly sure what he had left in the tank, but there was a lot on his mind.
“When (Seavey) got around me, he got me pretty good,” McIntosh recalled. “I didn’t know if we’d have anything left for him. I didn’t know if the car was going away or what was going on. But the caution came out and just going through my mind was all kinds of things. My crew guy on the fence didn’t know whether to tell me top or bottom. He’s saying top and bottom. We went green, and I went to the bottom and it worked. Once we took the lead, it was all good from there.”
Zeb Wise made a late-race run, sliding Seavey for second on the 36th lap, then began to make his run at McIntosh, reeling him in in a hurry. But the savvy McIntosh altered his path, moving to the high line in Turns 1 and 2 while remaining on the inside berm in 3 and 4.
“The bottom was pretty good most of the race,” McIntosh explained. “Toward the end, especially 1 and 2, it felt real sandy. I’m like, ‘It’s going away.’ Then one corner, going into 1 and 2, I heard somebody on my outside, and I knew I had to jump up. We were pretty good in 3 and 4 on the bottom, so I stayed on the bottom down there, but went to the top in 1 and 2. We were pretty steady, so I figured we were good from there.”
And that he definitely was, mastering one more restart with nine laps remaining to pull away for a 1.645-second victory over Chad Boat, Wise, Zach Daum and Justin Grant. In doing so, McIntosh became the fourth driver in the four-year history of the “Shamrock Classic” to win his first career USAC NOS Energy Drink Midget National Championship feature in the event following Shane Golobic (2016), Justin Grant (2017) and Seavey (2018).
The highest finishing Keith Kunz Motorsports entry was Seavey with a sixth-place finish for the Columbus-based race team.
Feature (50 laps): 1. Cannon McIntosh; 2. Chad Boat; 3. Zeb Wise; 4. Zach Daum; 5. Justin Grant; 6. Logan Seavey; 7. Tyler Courtney; 8. Andrew Layser; 9. Chris Windom; 10. Tucker Klaasmeyer; 11. Holley Hollan; 12. Jesse Colwell; 13. Tanner Carrick; 14. Kevin Thomas Jr.; 15. Dave Darland; 16. Matt Veatch; 17. Kyle O’Gara; 18. Brady Bacon; 19. Colten Cottle; 20. Tyler Thomas; 21. Daniel Robinson.
Brownstown to host sprint special
Brownstown Speedway will be in action on Friday and March 23 with two special events for non-wing sprint cars. On Friday night, the track will run the “All in 25” for sprints, plus super late models and modifieds. On March 23, the 11th Annual “No-Way-Out 40” will be contested with a top prize of $7,500 to win. Also competing that night will be pro late models, modifieds and super stocks.
