Cannon McIntosh is the 2025 USAC National Midget Champion. McIntosh drives for the Columbus-based Keith Kunz Motorsports team.
Submitted photo
Resilience was at the forefront of Cannon McIntosh’s ascension to the USAC NOS Energy Drink Midget National Championship in 2025.
One year after finishing as the runner-up in the series standings, the Bixby, Oklahoma, native climbed to the top after leading the series with five victories, 14 top-fives and 19 top-10s at the wheel of the Columbus-based Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports/Mobil 1–Toyota–Curb Records/LynK/Speedway Toyota No. 71K.
By a 44-point margin, McIntosh became the third Oklahoman to capture the USAC National Midget crown, following Christopher Bell (2013) and Daison Pursley (2024), who McIntosh finished as a runner-up to in the standings one year ago.
Meanwhile, McIntosh also provided Keith Kunz Motorsports its record-extending 13th USAC National Midget entrant title. For Curb-Agajanian, their latest entrant title is their 11th.
Since returning to KKM in 2024, McIntosh has accumulated eight wins, 29 top-fives and 39 top-10s in a total of 46 feature starts, a consistent run that saw him win more often (five) than he finished outside the top-10 (four) throughout the 2025 campaign. Mission accomplished.
“(Crew chief) Beau (Binder) and I sat down and talked about our goals and what we needed to do to accomplish them,” McIntosh explained. “I just took it one race at a time, and I felt like we struggled at the beginning, and just learned from every race as we went on. We had our down moments, but I feel like that’s when we came out and did our best, whether it was winning or just running up front the next time out.”
That seemed to be a reoccurring theme for the 22-year-old McIntosh. In May in Belleville, Kansas, McIntosh tangled with his championship nemesis, Justin Grant, while battling for second on the first of two nights on the short track. Restarting at the tail, he charged back from 22nd to finish fifth. One night later at Belleville, he bounced back to take the victory.
In July at The Dirt Track at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a mishap relegated him to a 21st-place finish on the opening night of the BC39 Presented by Avanti Windows & Doors. On the next night at IMS, misfortune seemingly continued after flipping wildly in his heat race. After repairs, he came back to win the semi-feature. Starting 19th in the feature, it seemed to be a long shot to win it, but don’t tell that to Cannon. After passing teammate Jacob Denney with two laps remaining, McIntosh had earned a $20,039 prize while becoming the first multi-time BC39 winner. The plus-18 run proved to be the biggest charge of the series season by any driver.
“We were really good at being resilient and overcoming bad nights,” McIntosh noted. “When I look back at the BC39, on the first night, we struggled, stalled the car and ended up in the back. When we came back the next night, I was scratching my head. I knew the car was capable, and then we went out and won it. That’s the moment I knew this team was capable of doing this.”
Prior to his BC39 triumph, McIntosh stood a distant 106 points out of the championship lead behind Justin Grant and Kale Drake. That just so happened to be when Cannon was at his best as he strung together seven consecutive podium finishes that resulted in another pair of victories during Mid-America Midget Week at Missouri’s Sweet Springs Motorsports Complex and Nebraska’s Jefferson County Speedway, the latter of which was worth a cool $10,000.
In a mere five races, McIntosh had erased a 106-point deficit to reign at the top of the standings following his Jefferson County win. After initially pulling away to a 39-point edge, the first event of November’s Golden State Invasion at Placerville Speedway’s Hangtown 100 had shrunk McIntosh’s lead to three over Grant.
But when the walls began to close in on McIntosh, he responded. He won the next race out, this time at Merced Speedway’s Midget Madness, and subsequently, stretched out his lead over Grant, a lead he did not relinquish. In fact, the Merced win was monumental as it provided car owner Keith Kunz his 200th career USAC national victory across the three divisions (Midget, Sprint Car, Silver Crown).
“It was those bad moments that really helped us do what we had to do,” McIntosh acknowledged. “But we weren’t going down without a fight. We were down a lot of points, but we just kind of forgot about that and decided to go out and start clicking off wins and podiums, and I think we went on a streak of seven podiums in a row. That got us right back in the fight. We were just not even thinking about it and just going out and racing.”
Behind every winning driver is a winning crew, and McIntosh is no exception.
“These guys worked really hard all year – Beau (Binder), Phil (Zubizareta) and Spencer (Rolenc) – that was our core group throughout the entire season,” McIntosh said. It took all these pieces to make it happen, along with Pete Willoughby and Keith Kunz. it’s an honor to do this for them. These guys stayed confident in me and I stayed confident in them all the time. That’s what did it, belief in ourselves and belief in the group that we have. I definitely couldn’t have done it without these guys.”
This week in racing history
From 60 years ago in 1965, Rex Mitchell was the super modified track champion at Paragon.
From 50 years ago in 1975, Calvin Gilstrap was the sprint car track champion at Lawrenceburg.
From 40 years ago in 1985, the track champions at Bloomington Speedway were Andy Hillenburg (sprints), Ernie Barrow (late models) and Denny Campbell (street stocks).
James Essex writes a motorsports notebook for The Republic. Send comments to sports@therepublic.com
