Race-long leaders Miller, Meseraull involved in incident with lapped traffic as McIntosh takes KKM to Victory Lane
DU QUOIN, IL (March 16, 2024) – The dry spell is over. Cannon McIntosh is once again in Victory Lane with the Xtreme Outlaw Midget Series presented by Toyota.
The 21-year-old from Bixby, OK, had been shut out of Victory Lane with the Series for 23-straight races, dating back to May of last year when he completed a sweep of the weekend Millbridge Speedway. But Saturday night was his night at the Southern Illinois Center, as he inherited the lead in the final laps – after an incident involving the top-two cars took them out of contention – and held on to win his sixth career Series Feature.
The win stood as McIntosh’s first in his return to Keith Kunz Motorsports (KKM), who he last drove for during the 2020 regular season and at the 2021 Chili Bowl Nationals.
“It feels amazing,” McIntosh said. “It feels like a long time since I’ve won. It feels a lot longer than it has been. It’s kind of been a journey all last year. Once we stopped winning, it was definitely dark times between switching teams and losing some relationships and that.
“But things circle back, and luckily, I feel like I’ve grown from a lot of losses in this timespan. It’s made me better as a driver, and I’m just thankful to be back in this position.”
Though McIntosh was victorious in the end, the majority of the race was controlled by front-row starters Joe B. Miller and Thomas Meseraull. The two open-wheel stars chased each other for the first 35 laps of the race, breaking only twice for cautions on Lap 4 and Lap 9.
After the caution periods, Miller – the polesitter – jumped out to a gap on Meseraull that grew nearly as large as a full second as the two began to break away from the field and enter lapped traffic. Inside and outside, Meseraull looked for any sliver of space to get by Miller but was unable to make the move.
That was until Lap 36, when Meseraull got a big run to the outside of Miller coming off Turn 4. Miller crossed the stripe first and entered Turn 1 hugging the inside berm. Meseraull swung it wide on the top lane through the corner and briefly took the lead out of Turn 2 as Miller was slowed-up by lapped cars in front of him.
As the two raced into Turn 3 nearly side-by-side, TJ Smith and Ethan Mitchell came together and flipped multiple times right in front of the leaders. Meseraull tried to evade on the outside but Smith came down on top of him. Miller locked-up and stalled on the bottom with Mitchell flipping in front of him as the red flag quickly came out.
All drivers were unharmed, but Smith, Mitchell and Meseraull were all towed off the track while Miller was ordered to restart from the tail of the field for his involvement in the incident as determined by race officials.
This incident handed the lead over to McIntosh, who was running in third place at the time.
“It didn’t matter to me, I just knew I was gonna be in whatever position was given to me,” McIntosh said. “Once I could hear them say I was the leader, I knew there wasn’t more than five laps to go, and I just had to execute, really.”
Now in control of the field with only five laps remaining, McIntosh began to devise his plan to keep the top spot.
“Once they said Ryan [Timms] was behind me, I knew he had probably been really good because he started pretty far back,” McIntosh said. “I knew I just couldn’t make any mistakes.
“[Timms] was obviously running a different line but Keith was basically telling me on the fence – stay on the bottom. It might not be better, but it’s gonna be hard for them to pass you if you hit your marks correctly.”
Ryan Timms had made the charge up to fourth by that time from his 12th-place spot on the starting grid and lined up to restart second, looking for a way to get by his KKM teammate.
“I thought I’d restart maybe fourth or fifth and then I heard over the PA I was restarting second,” Timms said. “I was definitely feeling good about it, especially with how fast I was up top in 3 and 4. But I knew it was going to be tough to beat Cannon if he just hit his marks on the bottom and didn’t make any big mistakes.”
Try as he may, however, Timms was unable to get by McIntosh in the end. McIntosh held off Timms’ challenges on the top and the bottom lanes to collect the $5,000 grand prize and the Series points lead by three points over Zach Daum.
“On that last lap, I just kinda went in full-send, wide-open on the top,” Timms said. “I really thought I was gonna get him. It seemed like to me we were side-by-side, at least in the middle of the corner and then he kinda pulled away going down the frontstretch.”
For the second night-in-a-row, Daum crossed the finish line third in the running order, this time coming in behind Timms. Jade Avedisian rebounded from her misfortunes on Friday night to finish fourth, while Trey Marcham crossed in fifth after starting 11th.
UP NEXT
The Xtreme Outlaw Midget Series presented by Toyota returns to action in three weeks’ time for a two-day swing through Missouri – Friday, April 5 at US36 Raceway and Saturday, April 6 at Sweet Springs Motorsports Complex.
Tickets for both events are on sale now at XtremeOutlawSeries.com and will also be available at the gate on race day. If you can’t be there in person, stream every lap live on DIRTVision.
ABBREVIATED RESULTS (view full results)
Feature (40 Laps): 1. 71K-Cannon McIntosh[4]; 2. 67-Ryan Timms[12]; 3. 7U-Zach Daum[6]; 4. 71-Jade Avedisian[3]; 5. 32-Trey Marcham[11]; 6. 67K-Ashton Torgerson[7]; 7. 86-Shane Cottle[15]; 8. 25K-Taylor Reimer[21]; 9. 40-Chase McDermand[5]; 10. 06-Rylan Gray[19]; 11. 97-Gavin Miller[17]; 12. 51B-Joe B Miller[1]; 13. 2H-Nick Hoffman[9]; 14. 83-Will Armitage[20]; 15. 21K-Karter Sarff[18]; 16. 55-Trevor Cline[10]; 17. 56D-Mitchell Davis[14]; 18. 19AZ-Hayden Reinbold[22]; 19. 7X-Thomas Meseraull[2]; 20. 14S-Tyler Smith[13]; 21. 19M-Ethan Mitchell[16]; 22. 56-Tyler Edwards[8]
Drivers Sebastien Bourdais, Renger van der Zande and Dixon, the Chip Ganassi Racing team and Cadillac Racing engineers combined to lead the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) entry to second place at Sebring International Raceway. It is the second runner-up finish of the young IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season for Cadillac Racing. The No. 31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R placed second in the Rolex 24 At Daytona in January.
An interview with Pipo Derani (drove No. 31 Whelen Cadillac V-Series.R in qualifying; best lap of 1:48.152; starts first) Tell us about qualifying. How is it shaping up for tomorrow?“It was a difficult qualifying session. It’s never easy when you have a red flag situation and you have to put the lap in. I was told over the radio that I could potentially have a second flying lap if I pushed. So, I obviously pushed but I was way too close for comfort to the No. 40 Acura. I was able to put the lap in but was a little bit disrupted because it wasn’t such a clean lap because he made a few mistakes in front of me, so I lost a little bit of time trying to control that distance to make sure I guaranteed a lap in case I didn’t have a second one. For sure, there’s more from the lap time. It wasn’t a perfect lap because of those things I said. Nevertheless, it was enough to be on pole. It’s never the nicest way to get a pole – for the grid – when you know that no one was able to achieve the full potential of their cars. Nevertheless, it’s still the same for everyone. You still have to put a lap in. You make no mistakes in such a pressure situation. I was able to extract to a certain extent enough out of the car that was good enough for pole. Very hot conditions, which makes it even more interesting how you operate the tires. It’s a tricky situation.” Where to you think the Cadillac is best around the track?“I don’t think there’s a place where it’s stronger. If you look at the DPi era, I think the car was better throughout the race. I think in GTP the Cadillac seems to be, at least here in Sebring, very positive on the heat of the day compared to the others. We tend to lose a little bit that advantage at night, I believe. Last year we saw Acura and Porsche very strong at the end. We restarted first and we lost some of that edge that we had throughout the day. We led a bunch of the race last year, but at the end we weren’t as competitive as in the beginning. It’s an area that as a team we’ve been working on from last year to try and improve. Obviously also last year at the very beginning of the race I had a contact with a P3 car that spun right in front of me, which damaged the floor of the car. We as a team are not sure how much of that damage influenced the end of the race. I think my honest opinion is that it’s not a matter of having a part of the track that it’s better for us, it’s more a matter of how the tire is reacting to the temperature. It still remains to be seen if a good car without any damage, if we are as strong as we were during the day, at night. Obviously the 01 didn’t get to the end of the race last year. It’s a bit of a question mark on that point. I would say it’s more temperature related as to a specific part of the track itself.” How difficult is it to put in a flying lap in a short session?“Well, the reality is that it’s the same for everyone. It’s not like there was someone who had put a lap in and then all the others were just basically waiting. In the end of the day, when you think of it this way, you just got to go and do the best you can. I honestly don’t feel much pressure in those situations. I feel like I handle it quite well. At the end of the day sometimes it’s better to be a bit on the conservative side and put a lap in than try a little bit over and make a mistake. In our car, I went out with a set of tires, had a red flag. I asked the team to change the tires and go with another new set, which was a risk because we didn’t know how much time the red flag was still going to be on. As you guys saw, as we went out, the 40 car, I think he kept the warm tires from the previous run, so he overtook me on cold tires. That’s the only situation where in that situation you don’t really know whether you’re going to have enough time to get the tire ready to do the lap. I think what helped us is it’s really hot out there and it helped us to bring the tires in a different way on the out-lap so that they were ready. That’s not always the case. It could in a much cooler condition be disruptive to one team or another because you might make the wrong choice whether you keep or not the tires, then you don’t have enough time to have them in the right window for a lap. I like pressure situations like that. I was happy to be able to put the lap in.” Did you use three sets of tires?“No, I went out on one, then as we came into the pit for the red flag, I asked them to change.” What are track conditions like?“I think the whole weekend the track is not as quick as last year. At Sebring, it’s quite usual to see that happen. Sometimes even during the day there’s periods of the day where you’re much quicker than others. Especially compared to when we were here a month ago during private testing, we were quicker than we are now. It’s just the condition that we have right now I think is a track condition and not cars. I would say, let’s say, if I had a perfect lap, it’s hard to say, but you could possibly be 4/10ths quicker than what I was, which would still be, if I’m not wrong, far from the pole position last year.”
Sebastien Bourdais (drove the No. 01 Cadillac V-Series.R in qualifying; best lap of 1:48.299; starts second): “It was a bit of a longshot (for pole) with the pit position we had. Couldn’t really put any heat in the tires on the second attempt (after red flag) and started the lap in the tail of the 10 (car). There really wasn’t any gap for me and the Lambo started to check up before the last corner and I knew I had to do the last corner somewhat quick and I ended up really close to the 10, but there was nowhere else to go. Just a shame that they put the red flag on us just before I could complete the first timed lap. That would have been enough for pole. We’ll take out second and go from there.”
Celebrating 50 years
Larson’s one career NCS win at Bristol Motor Speedway came in September 2021. The victory was the start of an impressive stretch of success for the Hendrick Motorsports driver at the Tennessee half-mile, with Larson becoming the only driver to tally a top-five result in each of the series’ last three events on the track’s concrete configuration.
REMEMBERING A MILESTONEOn March 25, 2007, Kyle Busch drove Chevrolet and Hendrick Motorsports to a history-making victory at Bristol Motor Speedway. In a side-by-side overtime finish, Busch edged out Jeff Burton at the line by a mere 0.064-seconds to take the win – a record that still stands as the closest margin of victory in a NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol. The win was a milestone feat for both Chevrolet and car owner Rick Hendrick – marking the manufacturer’s 600th all-time NCS win and 200th overall win for Hendrick. Making it even more special, the victory came in the competition debut of NASCAR’s fifth-generation race car – also known as the “Car of Tomorrow”. The new-generation race car marked the return of the Impala SS to NASCAR competition, with the legendary nameplate previously competing in the series from 1959 to 1964. Throughout its time on the track in NASCAR’s top division, the Impala/Impala SS collected 152 victories before retiring from competition following the 2012 season. 
The Bowtie brand also remains steady at the top of both the NCTS’ driver and manufacturer points standings. Coming off a runner-up finish at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, McAnally-Hilgemann Racing’s Tyler Ankrum maintained the lead in the driver points standings by five-markers over second-place. Six drivers from five different Chevrolet organizations have earned a top-10 position in the points standings, with Ankrum leading 2024 race winners Rajah Caruth (fourth) and Nick Sanchez (fifth); and fellow Team Chevy drivers Bret Holmes, Christian Eckes and Grant Enfinger in the eighth through 10th positions, respectively. 
Manufacturer Points Standings
Manufacturer Points Standings
Manufacturer Points Standings
NASCAR’s experiment with racing on a dirt surface at Bristol Motor Speedway seems to have run its course, and even some of the most ardent dirt-racing aficionados are happy to see this weekend’s Food City 500 contested on concrete.