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Amherst has good reason to be excited about the sport of Stock Car racing these days, at least Bandalero style. Amherst’s native son, Ryan MacIntosh, son of local Pizza Delight owner Keith MacIntosh, is rapidly making a name for himself south of the border.
After competing in the Bandalero class at Scotia Speedworld for two years, Ryan briefly tried his hand at the southern boys last summer. The result of this experiment was exciting and without going into all the details, a deal was worked out for Ryan to move to North Carolina and race for co-owner and crew chief Woody Woods under the “Bam Racing” banner. This is the same team that fields a car for Robbie Gordon in Sprint Cup.
Ryan moved South last fall and raced in the Winter Nationals Series as well as local events at Charlotte and Concord over the winter months. Ryan showed great promise and it was then decided that Ryan would stay in the South and run a Bandalero on the main circuit, and compete for the US Championship.
A few days later, it was announced that Ryan would also drive periodically in the Allison Legacy series, a slightly bigger and faster car and with a more experienced group of drivers. The best part of this story is that Ryan is still over a year away from being eligible to obtain a drivers’ licence.
Last weekend was a big weekend for Ryan. Friday night, Ryan took second place in the feature at Concord in a green-white-checker finish after starting fifth. Saturday night, again in Concord, Ryan led the feature before being involved in a wreck which ended his day. Sunday, in Rockingham, Ryan rebounded from a wreck in his heat and a spin early in the feature to bring home a third place finish.
All in all, Ryan has three podium (top three) finishes and a couple of heat wins in four race events to start the season.
Ryan MacIntosh is not the only up and coming youngster that is hoping to break through south of the border this year either. Brad Eddy, the sixteen year old son of local racing icon, Dan Eddy, has also ventured to the southern climes to test his skill against the Americans.
Eddy, who has raced in both the Bandalero and Legends classes here in the Maritimes over the past few campaigns, has made a big jump down South. He is piloting a Limited Late Model on the NASCAR weekly racing series.
In testing this past week on Friday, Eddy turned in times within three-tenths of the fastest times of the day. Although Brad has in excess of 175 laps under his belt, he, his father and the crew opted for more practice laps before competing with the other 24 drivers hungry for points in this highly competitive series and thus will skip Friday’s opener at Hickory Motor Speedway. Brad will probably make his debut next week.
All over the Maritimes, drivers and crews are busy gearing up for another fast paced and excitement filled season of stock car racing. Over the next few weeks, I will be filling you in on what’s happening in the different divisions across the Maritimes as we build up to the first event of the season, May 15th, at Centre for Speed.
This one is a demolition event, actually, the carry over from last season’s rain ending Atlantic Championships and is sure to be a crowd pleaser. We’ll talk more about that in the next few weeks as we get closer to the event.
Until next week, “keep the hammer down and don’t forget to turn left” but remember, racing belongs on the track, not on the street.
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