Born in
Gallup, New Mexico, McSpadden's family moved to
Tempe, a suburb of
Phoenix, Arizona, in 1954. He began racing in 1968 with a
supermodified bought from local racer Billy Shuman. He recorded his first sprint car feature race win at
Manzanita Speedway in 1972. McSpadden's 26-year career included nearly 200 feature wins, including 25 in five different divisions at Manzanita during the 1977 season. His awards are numerous; he is a three-time winner of the Western World Championship for sprint cars (1978, 1993, 1995) and he won the 1991
Chili Bowl midget car event. He also entered and won the Belleville Midget National Championships on the high banks in 1992. As well as racing in the United States, McSpadden was a frequent visitor to
Australia, where he made guest appearances at "Australia vs the USA" nights at
Parramatta City Raceway. He also won the 1995
Australian Speedcar Grand Prix (Midgets are called Speedcars in Australia), joining other American winners of the event including
Cal Niday, Bob Tattersall,
Jimmy Davies,
Dave Strickland,
A. J. Foyt,
Ron "Sleepy" Tripp,
Steve Kinser and Johnny Pearson. One particular race at Silver Dollar Speedway in
Chico, California, saw McSpadden crash out in his heat. He was badly shaken and his car took severe damage but promoter J.W. Hunt offered to add $1,000 to the winner's purse if McSpadden could come back through the qualifying B-main race and win the main event. He won both the B-main and the main event to win the increased purse. McSpadden retired from competitive racing in 1996 after winning the SCRA non-winged sprint car championship, having announced that he would be diverting his attention to the
NASCAR SuperTruck Series (which would later become the
Craftsman Truck Series). ==Awards==