CHATSWORTH, Ga. — Following the opening weekend of the Schaeffer's Fall Nationals, there was no doubt about which car was the fastest: The sizzling No. 4T of the Maryville, Tenn.-based Blount Motorsports team.
Donald McIntosh was the driver steering the weekend’s unbeaten machine Saturday, leading all 60 laps at North Georgia Speedway for a $10,000 payday. McIntosh’s victory came one night after his teammate Tommy Kerr drove the car to a $4,000 victory at the team’s hometown track, Smoky Mountain Speedway.
Switching cars helped McIntosh end a winless slump with the team that stretched back to May 26’s Schaeffer's Spring Nationals event at Rome (Ga.) Speedway.
“What a year, man. We’ve had a lot of flats and I’ve made a lot of mistakes and we’ve just had a lot of bad luck and tried hard, but what a night. I’m glad for these guys for standing behind me and not losing faith,” McIntosh said in victory lane, thanking car owner Larry Garner, crew chief David Bryant and the entire team. “It’s so cool to get a win tonight.”
The polesitting McIntosh, of Dawsonville, Ga., controlled the entire event, surviving a few late-race restarts and keeping his car glued to the inside lane of the third-mile oval where passing came at a premium. He had a cushion of lapped cars much of the race and pulled away from runner-up Casey Roberts of Toccoa, Ga., on the last-lap dash to the checkers after a lap-59 yellow.
Michael Page of Douglasville, Ga., stung by a miscue in preliminaries, was third while Kyle Hardy of Stephens City, Va., and Jason Hiett of Oxford, Ala., rounded out the top five. Kurt English of Murphy, N.C., started outside the front row but faded, dropping out of the top five by lap 16, out of the top 10 on lap 27 and settling for ninth.
While the winning car carried Kerr’s No. 4T, McIntosh was familiar with the team’s Rocket Chassis that won both weekend Fall Nationals.
“The last time I drove this car I won with it at Blue Ridge (Motorsports Park), so it’s always been a good race car,” said McIntosh, the team’s primary driver who is often joined by Kerr at his hometown track. “Yeah, it turns a little better than what we’ve been doing. I don’t think it’s the race car — I think it’s more of adjustments we’ve been making, and I think we’ve been overthinking ourselves.
“So finally we just kinda of just took it back. It took a night like last night and some of the nights we’ve had where I made mistakes and put us behind, or we’ve overadjusted and put us behind. Finally we just said, we’ve gotta go back to the drawing board, and we had a good night.”
Roberts, who started outside the second row, moved into the second spot after a lap-nine restart, but he never made a serious bid to unseat McIntosh as a rubber strip developed in the inside racing groove.
“In the rubber there, it’s just hard, about impossible, to pass someone, unless you go in there and rough ’em up or something,” said Roberts, who pilots the Wynn Motorsports No. 101. “We were just riding along. We were too tight, and we kept having to scoot our tire and we just couldn’t steer. We just wasn’t that great, but still, to come home second’s not bad for sure. We’ll take it and try and build on it and hopefully get a win here soon.”
Page ended up starting sixth after he mistook the white flag for the checkers in a heat race that would’ve put him outside the front row for the 60-lap main event.
“I’m just disappointed in myself. I thought that was checkered flag in the heat race — and it wasn’t,” he said. “ On this kind of a racetrack, it just killed me, because we probably had a good chance to win it from the front row. We just did all we could with what we had.
“I could get to Casey, but if you tried anything else, you were just going wreck one another. Because the more you try, the slower you get, so we just kind of rode and tried to finish."
Three cautions slowed the action. Third-running Dale McDowell of Chickamauga, Ga., pulled up lame on the ninth lap to draw the first yellow.
After 48 green flag laps, a lap-57 caution flew for David Payne’s flat right-rear tire, and the final yellow was called just before the checkers on lap 59 when Booger Brooks and Zach Leonhardi tangled battling for seventh.
