Debbie McIntosh had her hands full. She had just finished packing up the family car and now she was trying to corral her two young sons. Her husband had found work and secured a small apartment in Oklahoma, and the time had come to put Peoria, Illinois in the rear view mirror. It was tough to say goodbye.
Debbie McIntosh had her hands full. She had just finished packing up the family car and now she was trying to corral her two young sons. Her husband had found work and secured a small apartment in Oklahoma, and the time had come to put Peoria, Illinois in the rear view mirror. It was tough to say goodbye. Yet, the fortunes of Peoria seemed to rise and fall with the health of Caterpillar Incorporated, and in the early 1980s the company was floundering.
Bob McIntosh was a carpenter by trade but, given the dearth of work, he was tending bar with one of his brothers. He had a family to care for and was understandably anxious to find something more steady and lucrative. A friend had suggested there was plenty of construction work to be found in the Sooner State and, after confirming this on his own, he felt confident enough to summon his brood to join him.
While it was not in the forefront of McIntosh‘s mind, he certainly hoped it would be possible to resume one of the family hobbies. Bob‘s father, Arnold, owned a salvage lot in Peoria, so it was a fairly easy proposition to go stock car racing. It seemed as if the entire family got involved. Luckily all they needed to participate was right at hand. Sometimes it was as simple as picking out a car from what was available on the lot, knock out the windows and adding a roll cage.
Picking up where he left off, soon after he settled in Tulsa, Bob resumed his racing career and eventually had an office close to the old Tulsa Fairgrounds.
Bob would pass at a relatively early age, but by then his son Dave had also developed a love for racing. Dave recognizes now that the sport is just something “that gets in your blood.” However, his first efforts to continue a family tradition did not produce memorable results. By the time he was ready to give it a go the old fairgrounds was essentially a thing of the past, and a new track on the far north side of Tulsa was open for business.
Looking back to this time, Dave McIntosh says, “When I was very young I ran a factory stock. It was just me and it was a nightmare. It didn‘t last very long.” Nonetheless, when he began racing micros at Port City Raceway the story was decidedly different. He started in the Sportsman class and moved right up the ladder.
By the time he had progressed to non-wing he was developing a budding rivalry with micro standout Frank Flud, and also learned a valuable lesson one night when he was behind the late Donnie Ray Crawford. “I was running second to Donnie Ray one night,” he recalls, “and the caution came out. What happened blew me away. I was watching this kid go down and bump these infield tires as we paced around while waiting for the lineup to get set. He was intentionally moving the tires around to where he could get a run off the bottom.”
It was a lesson that took hold, and later he would tell his own children that when it came to this bullring, “you are going to win a lot more races on the bottom than you are trying to knock the fence down.”
Dave would win his share of races at Port City, but as his children Jace and Cannon began making their own mark in the sport he realized the time had come to take a back seat. “I had won a couple of championships,” he says, “but I couldn‘t keep up with my car. I would get the boys‘ cars ready to go and then they would be calling me to stage in the chute and I didn‘t even have time to adjust the air pressure. I will never forget when Cannon moved up and started racing in my class. By then he was better than me, but when he passed me I would still try to race with him.”
Then he adds with a laugh, “After I couldn‘t see him anymore, I would just pull in the infield and watch.” Jace McIntosh, who won a title at Port City, still races from time to time, but now devotes most of his efforts to his studies at Oklahoma State University. In contrast, his younger brother has his heart set on making it his career.
With his dad‘s help, Cannon McIntosh began competing at the age of seven. Sliding into a junior sprint car, he was successful from the very beginning. Just how good he was is a bit more difficult to answer. It is hard to be objective about your own children, particularly in matters such as these. So, looking back Dave McIntosh admits that he reserved judgement. “He had won the Tulsa Shootout in junior sprints,” Dave says, “and that year he won the championship at Port. I have no idea how many features he ripped off, but it was a lot. But, then again, it was in junior sprints and he had a real good car.
“We had put a lot of work and thought into his car. But I also saw him do some special things. He was actually setting up guys to pass at seven years old, so you do see little things like that. Then, later on, I watched he and Frank Flud go at it and he actually beat Frank in A Class and in Non-Wing. Now I thought we might really have something here with this kid. We were doing it with a good car, but with an engine we got from eBay.”
Dave McIntosh works in the oil and gas industry, now sitting atop a firm that specializes in pipe inspection. He has turned this into a business that has been successful enough to provide the resources needed to build a race team. Thankfully, Cannon is not blithely ignorant of his father‘s efforts. “I am grateful that he is so supportive,” Cannon says. “He has made quite a few sacrifices to build a team and that is exactly what we are trying to do. He is trying to do this while also pushing my career forward.”