SPEEDWAY, Ind. — His name might be Cannon McIntosh, but he might need to change his name to Pistol with how fast he took the lead from Chase McDermand to win Sunday’s BC39 at the dirt track at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
McDermand led 35 of the feature race’s 39 laps, but a small mistake in turn 4 heading to the white flag allowed McIntosh to snatch the lead of the race as the final lap began around the quarter-mile oval.
McDermand got the lead back going to turn 1 but slid up just enough in the corner for McIntosh to go underneath the No. 40 machine and take the lead. The Bixby, Okla. native just needed to protect the bottom lane in turns 3 and 4 and the $20,039 check was his.
“All I seen was, I seen the white, but really all I seen was red. It was attack mode at that point,” an excited McIntosh said after his post-race photographs. “And I just knew, I knew to get by [McDermand] and then let him just go in there and make that mistake. And then once I got by him again, I just said, ‘Protect, protect, protect.’ And that’s what I did down the back stretch, just protected.
“And yeah, man, when I crossed that line, I can’t express the feeling that was. That was something different, you know, to be able to win at IMS. It’s a different feeling, for sure.”
Try as he could, McDermand fell to third-place as Jade Avedisian finished second behind McIntosh with Daison Pursley finishing fourth and Kevin Thomas Jr. rounding out the top-five.
McDermand won his first USAC National Midget feature race on Thursday night at the IMS dirt track and was set to pull off his second win in four days. Instead, just like Ralph DePalma in the 1912 Indianapolis 500, McDermand led every lap of the race that counted except for the first two laps and the last two laps.
“To be honest, I don’t even know [what happened]. I feel like I entered the same on the bottom and it just happened to just kick the car a little bit too sideways,” McDermand said. So yeah, I’m just gutted for my entire team, but yeah, we’ve got to take out the positives that we’re able to, and that was that we still had the fastest car all weekend. So that’s a good positive for us and we’ve just got to go onto the next one.”
Avedisian ran around the top side of the race track in the No. 71 machine trying to get to the lead, but ran out of time. She was in the bottom part of the top-five for much of the race but was near the front when it counted.
“Honestly, the last 10 laps was phenomenal,” Avedisian said. “I wasn’t really sure how the racetrack was going to be this morning because they got so much rain. But even earlier today in the prelim night, we were able to go 10th to third, so it was super racy.”
Massive amounts of rain from the outer edges of Hurricane Helene forced IMS and USAC officials to postpone Friday and Saturday’s scheduled races until Sunday. The Friday night make-up races happened first and Kale Drake picked up his first USAC midget feature race win earlier in the afternoon.
Drake was running in third-place for much of the race but cut a left rear tire after going onto two wheels in turn 3 within the final 10 laps of the race. The No. 97K climbed back up to 18th by the race’s end after having dropped back to 23rd.
Christopher DeHarde has covered IndyCar racing and the Road to Indy for various outlets since 2014. In addition to open wheel racing, DeHarde has also covered IMSA and various short track racing events around Indiana. Originally from New Orleans, DeHarde moved to the Indianapolis area in 2017 to further pursue a career as a motorsports writer.