COLCORD, Okla. — In front of his home-state friends and family Friday night, Cannon McIntosh showed yet again why he remains one of the top midget racers in the country.
The 21-year-old Oklahoma racer’s sixth win of the season with the Xtreme Outlaw Midget Series presented by Toyota came after a slide job on Hayden Reinbold in lapped traffic at the halfway point.
McIntosh led the rest of the way and survived a late restart to take the checkered flag in national midget racing’s first- event at Arrowhead Speedway.
“It took me a few laps to get going, and once I figured out the line, I think the car just came to life,” McIntosh said. “It just took me a few laps to figure out what I needed to do to make the car happy.”
In collecting the $4,000 grand prize and his 11th career Xtreme Outlaw Series feature win, McIntosh increased his points lead to 165 over his teammate at Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports, Ryan Timms, who came from ninth to finish second.
Polesitter Jason McDougal led the field to the green flag and grabbed the early lead over Gunnar Setser and Reinbold.
As McDougal and Setser floated through the bottom and middle lanes, the top side was open for Reinbold, who threw it hard into turns one and two on the second lap and drove by both drivers to take the lead down the backstretch.
“There was just a little lane around the top that I was able to slot-car around,” Reinbold said. “The car was just really good; I think it was just a bit too good early.”
After a quick restart on lap three, Reinbold began to expand on his lead, opening a gap of nearly two seconds over second place at its largest. At this point, McIntosh had begun to make his charge to the front, taking over second from McDougal with a slide job in turns three and four on lap six.
Lap-by-lap, McIntosh cut deeper and deeper into Reinbold’s lead and by lap 11 had trimmed it down to only a few car lengths. McIntosh gave Reinbold his first challenge with a slider in turns three and four, but Reinbold stayed strong, crossing McIntosh over out of turn four to take the spot back.
Two circuits later, Reinbold went into turn one on the heels of two lapped cars and McIntosh right behind him. As Reinbold put a slider of his own on Kyle Bellm and slid up the track, McIntosh pointed his car down low and drove off turn two with speed and made the pass on the inside of Reinbold for the lead.
“I could tell I was catching him in clean air even when he was by himself, but when he got to traffic, I was able to really close it up,” McIntosh said. “And then just make a couple good moves. I entered high and diamond-ed down; I had to wait on it a lot but was able to still close up on him and throw the move on him.”
“I just struggled a little bit through traffic; kind of hard to get through cars a little bit,” Reinbold said. “He must’ve just made strides through traffic a little bit better than us and was able to pull off the slider on us. “
From there, it was all McIntosh out front with Timms giving chase behind him. From ninth on the starting grid, Timms had raced his way to third when McIntosh took the lead, right before the caution flag was displayed on lap 16 for a slowing Kyle Jones.
On the restart, Timms threw a slider on Reinbold in turns one and two to take second, which he held through the checkered flag to claim the runner-up spot for the second-straight race.
Timms was the fast qualifier, but heat race mistakes hurt his chances of winning the feature.
“I think staying in lapped traffic the first time we all got to it would have been a big difference,” Timms said. “Starting up front probably would have allowed that.”
Reinbold held onto third and crossed under the checkers to claim his second podium finish in the last two races, while reigning series champion Jade Avedisian crossed in fourth and Setser rounded out the top five.
The finish:
Feature (25 Laps): 1. 71K-Cannon McIntosh[3]; 2. 67-Ryan Timms[9]; 3. 19AZ-Hayden Reinbold[4]; 4. 71-Jade Avedisian[5]; 5. 98-Gunnar Setser[2]; 6. 7U-Zach Daum[11]; 7. 67K-Ashton Torgerson[17]; 8. 7P-Jason McDougal[1]; 9. 21-Jonathan Beason[19]; 10. 11A-Andrew Felker[8]; 11. 97-Gavin Miller[10]; 12. 55-Trevor Cline[12]; 13. 3P-Drake Edwards[13]; 14. 40-Chase McDermand[15]; 15. 93-Kyle Bellm[20]; 16. 5U-Peter Smith[16]; 17. 85-Tanner Conn[14]; 18. 66-Jayden Clay[21]; 19. 7-Shannon McQueen[22]; 20. 60X-Kyle Jones[7]; 21. 19-Taylor Hall[18]; 22. 14S-Tyler Edwards[6]