Chili Bowl: After 2 years away, Cannon McIntosh returns to Keith Kunz stable with eyes on a Golden Driller.

McIntosh -- who also goes by "CMac" -- has come a long way during his hiatus from Kunz' racing empire.

Run it back? @KKM_67

I will be piloting the @gearwrench @ToyotaRacing KKM machine for the 2024 @cbnationals

🎥 @MavMillerMedia #teamtoyota #gearwrench pic.twitter.com/ORERtQsVeR

— Cannon McIntosh (@Cannon_mac08) December 16, 2023

At 21 years old, Cannon McIntosh has been on a hero’s journey through the midget racing world with forces in and out of his control working in tandem to move his story along.

From summer 2022 to summer 2023, McIntosh won 22 midget features, the most of any driver across the national scene. Then a cold front snapped and the wins went dry. Six months is a long time for the Bixby, Okla. native to go without a win, and he looks to fix that on Saturday night when he goes after the Chili Bowl's coveted Golden Driller.

McIntosh enters 2024 as one of the four Toyota Racing Development drivers participating in the Chili Bowl and the fire to prove again on the national stage what he’s capable of is burning red-hot.

For the last two years, McIntosh has been racing in the Chili Bowl with the Dave Mac-Dalby Motorsports (DMD) team, which is majority-owned by his father. But this year, he returned to Keith Kunz Motorsports (KKM) for the Chili Bowl while running the Toyota-Powered 71P midget. Cannon will also run the full USAC Midget schedule backed by KKM.

“I'm super excited to just be back with these guys,” McIntosh said, “Obviously, they know how to win races and I feel like I've learned and become a better driver since I've been here. So it should be a good combination.”

Cannon McIntosh has one of the fastest cars in the field for Saturday's Chili Bowl A-Main main event. Photo courtesy Toyota Racing Development

This will be McIntosh’s sixth time at the Chili Bowl, he ran his first race in the prestigious event when he was 16, and in the five years since he has made the feature three times, finishing fourth or better. His best finishes on the podium have been third-place showings in 2020 and again in 2023.

For his first year in the Expo Center, he ran on Saturday night and finished fifth, after that, he moved to Monday nights and was dubbed with the nomenclature Mr. Monday because he won three of his four Monday night A-Mains. The one year that he didn’t win, he finished in 6th and missed Saturday’s feature after he failed to make it out of the B-Main.

This year, hopes were high for the KKM driver to capture another Monday night victory. It turned out that KKM teammate Tanner Carrick took the victory after McIntosh faded from the pole and finished sixth.

Hopefully, 2024 will not play out in the same way as 2022 and chances are it won’t, McIntosh has learned that with maturity, you find ways to bounce back better.

“We’re going to be right on the bubble for the B-Main on Saturday, McIntosh told Auto Racing Digest, “They’re going to transfer either 7 or 8 into the A-Main. We just have to be aggressive right away on Saturday and just really keep ourselves out of trouble.

"I know we’re gonna have a good race car. We learned what we don’t want to do race car-wise on Monday. I learned from the mistakes that I made and just took those tools and applied them on Saturday. It’s really just getting away from that bubble and trying to get as far forward as you can to get a better-starting sport and just transfer out of the B-Main.”

It’s going to be extremely difficult to move forward on Saturday with the level of talent on the top side of the field. Every spot that McIntosh can avoid by a solid B-Main run, means one less car to pass in the A-Main.

Fans have yet to see McIntosh run through the field for a podium since his A Main victories have placed him near the front in each of his three Saturday showings. This week, while not what the team or driver was hoping for, folks have the chance to see what he can do and the driver has the chance to claim redemption from his missed A-Main in 2022.

To prepare further for both Saturday’s feature and his run at a championship with KKM, McIntosh has been sharing responsibility and spending the days that he’s not racing at DMD, helping his former team prepare. In doing this McIntosh gains the needed experience to prosper in the parts of racing that exist outside of the race car. The lessons that he’s learning help him grow into a better teammate and leader and also transition to inside the car.

“We had Parker Price [Miller] running last night and he ran really good," McIntosh said, “We struggled at the end of the night. Getting to help out and give feedback where I could there was good. It’s cool to do, to go back and forth. Be a driver and be hands-on and get involved in it and still learn.

"There’s always time to learn in this building. I’m just taking advantage of every bit of knowledge that I can take in, watching the track progress, learning how the cars react to it, and seeing how the competition is as well.”

While moral wins and learning opportunities are great, McIntosh is hunting after just one goal: the Golden Driller trophy and the $20,000 first-place prize.