McFADDEN ON THIRD CLASSIC AND CELEBRATION SLIP

Photography by: Richard Hathaway

By Thomas Miles (courtesy Auto Action)

James McFadden became a three-time Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic champion with another special drive at Premier Speedway, but the celebration was not quite as polished.

After overhauling Jamie Veal and Jock Goodyer in a special battle, McFadden drove clear to beat Cory Eliason by seven tenths in the 52nd edition of the most famous sprintcar race in Australia.

To mark the triumph, the Brady Motorsport driver wanted to celebrate in style by standing on the wing and completing a shoey.

McFadden did complete a memorable celebration, however, it was far from planned.

He slipped and slid down the wing before falling heavily on the front wing on his way to the turf.

McFadden is bruised from the celebrations, but it has not diminished his joy.

“It is pretty special. It is our Bathurst. The race in Australia you grow up wanting to be a part of and the one you want to win,” McFadden told Auto Action.

“Just to be a champion once is special, but three times is just crazy and to do it with a great team and car with Sheldon (Brady) was icing on the cake.

“I did not realise the boys had baby oiled the car so much,” he recalled about the celebration slip.

“They put mud off stuff because they thought the track was going to be really muddy, so when I got up there I lost my footing.

“I thought ‘I should now make it better than what it needs to be’ and tried to get to the front wing and didn’t make it.

“I have a bruised arse and ego, but everything else is good.”

The race for victory was defined by two moments. The first when McFadden struck the lapped James Inglis at turn two and was reinstated second before fending off Veal and Goodyer in a heated fight for the lead.

“I followed him in and thought he was going to slide to the middle of the track with the angle he was at,” McFadden said on the Inglis clash.

 “Whether he got the hole or whatever he just kind of slid down a lot more than I anticipated and ended up on my line and got into the side of him.

“It bent the radius rod and a couple of little things, but nothing too major. At the end of the day you need some luck sometimes to win these races and we were able to capitalise after that.

“I could imagine it was pretty cool to watch for a fan and in the driver’s seat it was one of the funnest races I have had in a while.

“It was treacherous, the track had some character building holes and things in it.

“It got really technical at times and the lines moved a lot during the race, so you always had to be thinking and be as smart as you could, but still drive it to the limit because we were pounding it for the whole 40 laps.”

Despite winning the race so well, it was far from a smooth weekend with McFadden and Brady Motorsport not unlocking the pace until the very end.

“We qualifued really bad in 12th and had to pass a lot of cars in the heats to get us into contention,” he said.

“I did not feel we were that great in the first night and I did not press too much becuase the risk versus reward was so high.

“We did not have the pace of Jock to pound the fence that hard (on Night 2) and came back to the shop and laid it all on the floor, talking about different things with the car.

“Buzzy (crew chief Kim ‘Buzzy’ Buswell) and myself did a couple of little things here and there to help certain things and we hot lapped with a full tank of fuel and were fast. We crept up on it and made it right.”

The 52nd Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic felt as big as ever with a sold-out crowd of around 8000 packing Premier Speedway.

As big races such as High Limit impress in WA, McFadden would love to see the capacity and prize money at the Classic grow.

“I feel like it needs to grow with the sport. You can see with the professionalism of the teams and how much money is sitting in the pit area in trucks and trailers and teams,” he said of Premier Speedway.

“They don’t need to put $100,000 to win or anything but the prize money needs to go up a bit to attract more Americans.

“I feel like a race as big as it is should never sell out. There should be at least 15,000 people at that event and we could easily do that with a few more grandstands.

“It takes money and time to do things like that but the sport is at that stage that if we don’t take the bull by the horns right now, we are going to miss out.”

Sprintcar racing resumes tonight at the redeveloped Tolmer Speedway for the 60th Anniversary JBS Sprintcar Jamboree, which will be a tune up for the Aussie title.