It was eventful and occasionally dramatic but Garrett Mitchell aka Cleetus McFarland made it to the checkered flag in his NASCAR O’Reilly Series debut at Rockingham Speedway on Saturday.
Driving the No. 33 for Richard Childress Racing, McFarland finished 32nd and six laps behind winner William Sawalich and there was a lot that happened over 250 laps in the sand hills region.
- Off the initial start, he found himself three-wide and sideways but saved it and kept going
- Narrowly avoided a collision with a sideways Blake Lothian
- Pit road speeding penalties
- Numerous half-spins
Cleetus McFarland, No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet; Sheldon Creed, No. 00 Haas Factory Team Chevrolet
Photo by: James Gilbert / Getty Images
McFarland called it ‘the hardest thing I have ever done in my life’ but also celebrated gaining one overall position from start to finish.
“Did I ruin anyone’s day other than my own,” he asked. “I did not. This was one hell of an opportunity and I got my ass kicked but I finished the race. That was our goal.
“So we did meet our goals. We did have higher expectations, or higher wants — I think we got to 26th for a minute and I was like so excited just to hear that that literally the next corner I went in and spun out because I was just going too danged fast for my own abilities.”
McFarland said he got too ambitious during that initial start.
“I had a ton of confidence, and then I spun out, then about 50 laps into the race, when I was kind of on my own racing those other four guys, I got my confidence back. That carried on for a while.”
He said the first near-spin killed his tires for the first run and it was a lesson regarding how sensitive these tires are when they’re abused.
“At that moment I was like, ‘I have put myself in the worst position I could possibly be in right now,’ and ‘I am way in over my head,'” he said. “But I knew we just had to get to the end and that’s what we did.”
At one point, teammate Jesse Love was in the back and saving his tires to restart on them come the start of the next stage. McFarland said he tried to learn from that opportunity and did.
“I was already way back in the field, I got behind Jesse Love when he was saving tires,” McFarland said. “And I could catch him, but just watching his line, I was like, ‘Shoot, I’ve been doing that wrong all day.’ Learned so much and the guys were helping me a lot on the radios. It was great.
“I mean I think I spun out 50 times, almost died 10 times. And overall I’m here with a car that’s not destroyed. I didn’t ruin anyone’s day, which was my main goal. I did want to stay out of the news more. You know, Dale Jr. said, ‘Please, stay out of the news.’ That was my goal. But several times I just over-drove the corner, and then the one time I lost it and caused a caution.”
The reason McFarland was in this race is that NASCAR had required him to participate at Rockingham as part of an approval process to race on superspeedways at the second highest level.
There is a race at Talladega at the end of the month and the Daytona in August and Talladega again in October.
He finished fourth earlier in the day in the ARCA East race for Rette Jones Racing but still has less than a dozen full bodied stock car appearances on his resume and NASCAR doesn’t want a driver that didn’t meet an approval process potentially crashing series regulars on superspeedways.
McFarland feels like he did enough to compete in those races.
“So all in all, I made a ton of mistakes and I learned a lot,” McFarland said. “I hope to stay more out of the news than I did but I have a lot to learn. And you know, all this internet talk, it got me thinking maybe I shouldn’t come back …
“PSYCH! See you guys in two weeks at Talladega. That’s right!”
“They might ask us to run another race…”
Richard Childress Racing’s vice president of O’Reilly Series operations, Danny Lawrence, offered a nuanced response to his driver’s efforts.
“Well, it’s a big step,” Lawrence told Motorsport.com. “This is a hard race track and he did really good a couple of times where he could have spun the car out in front of everybody and didn’t. I think if we were to go green tomorrow, he would be way better.
“He learned a lot in a short amount of time and I think it shows everyone what a big step this is going into the O’Reilly Series. I think he did a great job but we got to be better.”
So, to wit, Lawrence isn’t totally sure NASCAR has seen enough to grant approval for Talladega.
“Well, they’ll look at everything,” Lawrence said. “They might ask us to run another race because the thing about it is we didn’t get to do a live pit stop. There were a lot of things they wanted to see happen that didn’t happen.
“When he got sideways early, we automatically went into this conservation mode of just keep rolling and don’t push it too hard. So, it’s going to be close, but I would not be surprised if NASCAR didn’t want us to run another race before we got to Daytona and Talladega. Everything happens so fast there that we all want to be prepared when we do take him there.”
Justin Allgaier, the 2024 series champion praised McFarland for staying out of the way every time they lapped him, without incident.
“I thought Cleetus did a great job,” Allgaier said. “You know, he did a really good job this morning in the ARCA race to come home with a top-five was just trying to figure out where he needed to be at today. He had one spin off Turn 4 and I don’t know what happened but I do not envy his position at all.
“I know that today had to be really tough on him, especially with some of the social media stuff that he’s had going against him the past few weeks, so I’m proud of him. He put in the effort and tried to make sure he was where he needed to be to have s a solid day.
“I think he did exactly what he needed to do and hopefully he had a good time.”
Would Allgaier trust McFarland enough to push him in the draft?
“Look man, I can’t answer that because I think there’s a couple that we race with weekly that I don’t know that I would want to draft with at Talladega,” Allgaier said.
Allgaier reiterated what he said earlier in the weekend in stating that he believes the YouTube sensation has a greater respect and appreciation for what the NASCAR regulars do each week.
“It’s not that I don’t think he respected it when he started, but I think he respect more the time and effort that goes into this than he did before,” Allgaier said. “Like I said, I hope he had a great time and runs 100 races or he runs one more, I had no problem racing with him today. He did a good job.”
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