James McFadden Claims Third Win of the Year at Douglas County

Spencer Bayston, Zeb Wise, James McFadden and Justin Sanders leading the four-wide salute at Douglas County Dirt Track in Roseburg, Oregon. (Photo: High Limit Racing Media)

ROSEBURG, Ore. — Just as the East Coast was winding down for the night, the West Coast was starting to kick into high gear. Douglas County Dirt Track opened their gates for High Limit Racing’s Showdown on the River on Monday night.

Justin Sanders and Spencer Bayston kicked off the 35 lap race from the front row. Coming off of Turn 2, Sanders jumped out to an early race lead, while Bayston felt the pressure in second from James McFadden, who had come up on the inside. They drag raced into Turn 3 and stayed side-by-side throughout the corner, but it was McFadden who claimed runner-up at the line.

Four laps later, McFadden was closing the door on Sanders. As he edged closer and closer to the leader, lapped cars started to play a factor. Just as McFadden was going to make a move on Sanders, Camden Robustelli almost spun out directly in front of “J-Mac”, causing him to swerve and lose some ground.

As McFadden was regaining his footing, Zeb Wise spun out in Turns 1 and 2 and caught a wave of air, resulting in him flipping over and drawing a red flag.

On the restart, Sanders and McFadden raced side-by-side with each other into the corner, but McFadden reigned victorious as the pair exited. After he snuck himself in front of Sanders, McFadden powered ahead and put a sizeable gap between them.

A couple laps later, Tanner Holmes and Justin Peck went head-to-head for fourth. With Bayston in front of them and being held off by Sanders, both drivers wanted a shot at a podium finish and were doing everything in their power to make that so. After running close to each other for a little bit, Holmes went to the bottom coming out of Turn 2 to overtake fourth with his sights set on Bayston.

With 20 laps remaining, Holmes had worked his way up to Bayston and hugged the bottom. As he worked his way around the dirt oval, he edged closer and closer to Bayston and finally took the coveted third place spot for Lap 16.

Lapped traffic is one of the biggest factors of any motorsport and dirt racing is no exception. McFadden ran into Kasey Kahne as he flew into Turn 1, and he had to figure out a way to get around him to maintain his pace. Once he did that, he put a car between himself and Sanders, but Sanders was not giving up so easily. In fact, he did quite the opposite, quickly passing Kahne and racing in hot pursuit of McFadden. He pulled up beside him coming down the frontstretch on the bottom and was about to attempt a slide job when he went into the corner too hard and drifted up, almost hitting the wall. 

Sanders got close to McFadden a few more times and even had his nose ahead of McFadden’s front tires for a couple seconds. However, he could not get ahead of the Aussie no matter what he did. What Sanders got though, was a fight with Tanner Holmes. The Oregon native was getting more comfortable with the runner-up spot and decided to vie for it. Although he was not successful in his efforts, he managed to hold off Corey Day, who was charging hard to crack the top three.

McFadden managed to hold off Sanders for his third win of the year and Day ended up losing fourth to Peck in a slide job to round out the top five.

High Limit Racing continues their West Coast streak with another “Mid-Week Money Series” race on Wednesday at Grays Harbor Raceway in Elma, Washington.