Donald McIntosh and crew chief David Bryant
This past weekend Blount Motorsports driver Donald McIntosh secured his fourth win in the event known as the Hangover at 411 Motor Speedway. This driver and team seem to have a knack for putting their Vic Hill Racing Engines powered Rocket Chassis in victory lane at the Seymour, Tenn. facility and they once again collected a checkered flag and $5,000 for their efforts on Saturday afternoon.
What makes McIntosh so good at 411?
“It really just fits my driving style,” McIntosh explained in a post-race interview with InsideDirtRacing.com. “I don’t know, there’s just something about it – the banking, slick, fast, choppy – it just really fits me. I don’t really know what it is about it but it fits our adjustments, the adjustments we want to make to make me feel comfortable. This track just really lends itself to that. There are certain tracks that don’t, but this is definitely one that does.”
And more than just fitting his driving style, the team worked particularly hard to achieve the Hangover win. McIntosh and BMS crew chief David Bryant took advantage of two days worth of testing at 411 leading up to to the race itself.
“It does because to be honest with you,” McIntosh answered when asked if testing helps his team. “The last couple of times we’ve even run here we haven’t been that great. We’ve known we needed to test so Thursday and Friday both we did some testing, and honestly, it helped a bunch. We tried some things we had not run before and still a little mixture of things we had done and we found what we’ve been missing.”
Donald McIntosh won the Hangover this past weekend at 411
After taking a year in which he worked toward running his own team, McIntosh reunited with Blount Motorsports for the 2019 season and the pairing picked up right where they left off by scoring six feature wins and the Fall Nationals Series title. Still, however, there was always room for improvement during the just completed campaign.
McIntosh and BMS won the Spring Nationals Series in 2015 and 2016. The goal in their second run together was to return to that level of competitiveness then take it even further. Ending the year with the Fall Nationals championship and the Hangover victory seems to indicate they are heading in the right direction.
“Like I said, it’s not that we’ve been way off,” McIntosh pointed out. “It’s just that there were little things that make a real big difference because everybody is fast nowadays, everybody has good cars and good motors. Really and truthfully, it’s just the little things and getting happy and meshing as a team.”
Now the team will focus its energy over the next few weeks toward getting ready for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series sanctioned races at Florida’s East Bay Raceway Park in February.
“Pretty much we’re going to be getting tires ready and servicing the car,” McIntosh said. “It’s a big confidence boost to know that our car is good, our package is good, and just knowing we have a good piece going down there is a big confidence booster.”
McIntosh and the BMS crew celebrating their Hangover win at 411
The native of Dawsonville, GA has accomplished a great deal on the regional scene in Dirt Late Model racing. Two Spring Nationals championships, the Fall Nationals championship, and five top-5 finishes in the final standings of the Southern Nationals Series decorate his personal record book. Now the 25-year-old driver hopes that in 2020 he and his team can show the rest of the dirt racing world that they can contend at an even higher level.
“We’re going to try to run some bigger races this year,” McIntosh declared. “We’re still going to run a lot of those Southern Nationals type races, but when we get an opportunity to run the bigger races, we’re going to hit those. Starting off the year at East Bay is going to be a big deal. Last year we went to Volusia for a couple of nights but I really like that East Bay track. That place is really cool so I’m excited about that.”
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