Winning Saturday’s 53-lap Dixie Shootout at Dixie Speedway in Woodstock, Ga., was deeply satisfying to Donald McIntosh. It doesn’t mean he was celebrating wildly in victory lane, though.

The 32-year-old driver from Dawsonville, Ga., experienced some opposing emotions after clinching the flag-to-flag triumph worth $10,053. He was happy to finally grab a checkered flag in a challenging season he’s spent chasing the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series with team owner Billy Hicks of Mount Airy, N.C., but he was saddened it came following a lap-37 scrape that sent Garrett Smith of Eatonton, Ga., spinning into the inside wall on the backstretch.

McIntosh was apologetic to the 22-year-old Smith in his postrace comments, accepting blame for triggering the incident that came one circuit after a restart. The two drivers nearly tangled off turn four when McIntosh slid off the top in front of Smith, and then moments later they did make contact exiting turn two when McIntosh bounced off the cushion there. Smith’s bid ended there due to the heavy damage it sustained when he smacked the inside wall.

“Honestly, the race car was a lot better than I was tonight,” McIntosh said. “I jumped the cushion down there and unfortunately got into Garrett there trying to get back into the racetrack, so sorry to him. I was just trying too hard and got a little over my head and then over the cushion, but I had a really good race car.

“So again, sorry to Garrett there. When I come back across the racetrack, I know we were just going hard for it there and got together.”

Smith, who was racing on his birthday and just a couple weeks since his engagement, angrily crawled out of his car and expressed his displeasure by flinging his steering wheel at McIntosh’s passing machine.

“Obviously I was pretty frustrated in the moment,” Smith told DirtonDirt on Sunday morning. “I feel like I was very patient with Donald the entire race. It just sucks. I feel like I turned down the hill to leave him a lane to come back to after he jumped the cushion. He jumped it back-to-back corners.

“From what I felt and saw, he had turned left coming off turn two, and when he did, we hit. It was a pretty hard hit and the (Longhorn) car will have to go to the jig (for repairs).”

Smith took note of McIntosh’s victory lane comments accepting responsibility for the tangle.

“I appreciate and respect the fact that he apologized in his interview,” Smith added.

Despite the incident, McIntosh remarked that the triumph in the event sanctioned by Ray Cook’s three tours — Southern All Star Dirt Racing Series, Schaeffer’s Spring Nationals and Schaeffer’s Southern Nationals — was still a morale booster for him and his team.

“It’s been a long year,” said McIntosh, who has one top-five and 13 top-10 finishes in Lucas Oil Series action and will be crowned the 2025 Rookie of the Year during next weekend’s Dirt Track World Championship at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. “We’ve had a lot of fun, but to get it done tonight means a lot. I’ve got a really, really good race car, so that definitely builds confidence.”

Adding significance to McIntosh’s victory in his home state was the fact that Hicks’s No. 79 was carrying a powerful Buick engine that McIntosh and his father built themselves.

“This engine dad and I built, it’s a Buick,” McIntosh said, “so to get a track record here (in qualifying) with a Buick, I think that’s really cool.”