Editor’s Note: Cannon McIntosh, 16, is a rookie in the POWRi Lucas Oil National Midget League. Throughout the course of the season, McIntosh will share his experiences with SPEED SPORT readers while competing up and down the road in midget-car competition.Â
McIntosh drives the No. 08 Toyota-powered midget for Dave Mac Motorsports, his father’s racing operation. Below is his first diary entry, introducing himself and previewing Thursday night’s Illinois Midget Week opener at Fayette County Speedway in Brownstown, Ill.
Select entries from McIntosh will be free to the public, but the majority of the series will be available to SPEED SPORT premium subscribers only. You can become a premium member of SPEEDSPORT.com today for just $19.95/year by clicking here.
BROWNSTOWN, Ill. – This is Cannon McIntosh, and I’m excited to be able to give all of you guys a little look into what it’s like for our family team as we race up and down the road this year.
I’m 16 years old and from Bixby, Okla., and I grew up racing micro sprints at Port City Raceway and in the surrounding area – the same region that Christopher Bell got his start in before he graduated through the Toyota midget program and went NASCAR racing.
It’s been a fairly recent move to midgets for me; it’s happened in the last two years, and going from micros to midgets has been a little bit different, mainly because of the weight of the cars and the speed that comes with the extra power.
Racing micros at Port City felt like a trainer for me, because I know the pedigree of drivers that have come out of there and knowing that I want to race for a living, it was good for me to experience that and fight through that level of competition.
I drove a BOSS Chassis for Eric Fenton for a little bit, but once we’ve gotten rolling with our little family-owned operation, it’s been pretty good for us ever since then. We tore up some stuff last year, but we’re definitely getting a lot better.
We picked up a huge win with USAC in March at the Shamrock Classic in DuQuoin, Ill., and I think that’s really spurred my confidence and gotten it a lot higher, along with a couple of top-five finishes during Indiana Midget Week where we felt we had a decent shot at wins.
We’re actually going into our second Speedweek of the month, as we’re tackling POWRi’s Illinois Speed Week fresh off a run at USAC’s Indiana Midget Week last week, and hoping that this week will help us in points to give us a run at the POWRi points championship too.
We’re definitely a lot better than we were at this point last year, for sure. Running Indiana Midget Week made us stronger as a team and taught us a lot, because we are still pretty new at this – especially the traveling from track to track across the country part!
We’re showing that we can run with a lot of these fast guys, though. We’ve come a long way in a short period of time, and hopefully now we can move forward and pick up a Speed Week win, because these guys have worked hard and definitely deserve one.
I think Indiana Midget Week showed us that there’s always another night, and you can’t look back and dwell on the night before; you have to keep looking ahead and move on to the next race. I learned you have to keep your energy up and get enough sleep, too!
We ran with the best midget drivers in the world last week and a lot of them are back again here in Illinois, but we feel prepared and as ready as ever to make some noise and show everyone what we’re capable of.
Hopefully the rain stays away and we get all five nights in this week, because I believe we’ll be a threat for the Illinois Speed Week championship if we play our cards right.
Thank you all for reading and I hope you’ll continue on down the road with us this year!
– Cannon