NASCAR put the brakes on YouTube star “Cleetus McFarland” and his quest to drive in this month’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Talladega Superspeedway.
McFarland, whose real name is Garrett Mitchell, announced Tuesday to his 4.7 million YouTube subscribers that he won’t be competing on April 25 at one of the sport’s biggest and fastest tracks.
“We’re all huge Cleetus fans. We all watch his videos and are certainly very appreciative of everything he’s done in our sport and will continue to do in our sport,” said John Probst, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer, in a statement. “He is approved right now for O’Reilly Series short tracks, which means he’s good for all of ARCA, all of (the Truck Series), and then O’Reilly up through the short tracks.
“We’d like to see more out of Cleetus in the short tracks. So we’re not saying no, but there is more that we would like to see out of Cleetus before we would approve him for Talladega.”
Mitchell, 31, made his NASCAR debut in the third-tier Craftsman Truck Series on Feb. 13 at Daytona, Fla., before making his first start in the second-tier O’Reilly Auto Parts Series last Saturday at Rockingham, N.C.
He crashed after five laps and finished dead last (37th) at Daytona and finished 32nd (out of 38) at Rockingham, completing 244 of 250 laps in the latter but also spinning out twice during the race.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to hear from me first that I have been denied by NASCAR to run Talladega in my O’Reilly’s car,” Mitchell told his nearly 1 million followers in a video Tuesday on Instagram. “(I) made my O’Reilly’s debut last Saturday with hopes of getting approval for Talladega, but they did not see enough. Granted, it was a pretty hectic race. I tried to pass someone three-wide on the third lap, spun out, spun out a few more times. Didn’t crash or crash anybody, but still, it was pretty hectic.
“Nonetheless, NASCAR has said, we’re gonna need to see you run more ARCA and more trucks. I’m fully approved for trucks — which I have some of those on my schedule coming up — but in the O’Reilly’s, I am still limited to short tracks.”
Mitchell raced in the ARCA Menards Series in 2025, including a 10th-place finish at Talladega.
“I’ve only been racing NASCAR for one year, so it was never my mission to go out and climb in an O’Reilly’s car and get to the top as fast as I can,” he said. “But we figured we’d try, and we didn’t get approved. So it is what it is. I need more windshield time, regardless of whether it’s in an O’Reilly’s car, an ARCA car or a truck; more windshield time is going to help me. I got a lot to learn, guys, so this isn’t as much of a step back or a push down as it seems — little bit of a kick in the nuts, but I just got to get out there in the other cars, do as much learning as possible, and then hopefully I’ll get to run Daytona and Talladega next year.”
