By all accounts, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been very supportive of Cleetus McFarland, as the YouTuber born Garrett Mitchell methodically works his way towards what he intends to be an eventual start in the Daytona 500.
This all began when McFarland struck up a friendship with the late Greg Biffle while doing charity work towards the hurricane battered North Carolina high country region. McFarland, who races a variety of cars and owns a short track in Bradenton, Florida, suggested to the former Cup Series contender that he wanted to work his way up to the Daytona 500.
Biffle was supportive but also made efforts to make McFarland treat his eventual progress with a little more diligence. Those figurative guardrails went away when Biffle died in an aviation incident back in December.
Racing in the memory of Biffle, McFarland wanted to very quickly work his way towards Daytona but quickly realized that it was more challenging that even his respectful stance towards the industry gave credit for.
But when Richard Childress Racing came calling with a proposal over the spring, that included a process-based pathway towards the highest levels, including starts in the NASCAR O’Reilly Series, McFarland again began to dream of Daytona.
It’s been a challenging proposition. Even with successes in ARCA, at both superspeedways and short tracks, his starts in the Truck and O’Reilly divisions have been a real education. The races, in an RCR car, have been a real handful for McFarland with multiple spins across Rockingham and Nashville.
To that end, Earnhardt continues to support McFarland, but offered some advice on Tuesday on his Dale Jr. Download podcast’s Ask Dale segment.
Well, you know, (there) was lot of mistakes,” Earnhardt said. “Listen, everyone who gets into racing who who gets into it is going to bust their ass under somebody. (Nashville) especially. … He’s out there running laps and I don’t think he ruined anyone’s days … I thought he did fine.
“My whole feeling about his deal is, if he can get himself two full seasons or a couple of years in ARCA, running all the ARCA races, all of them. Short tracks, everywhere. If he could go do that, man, I think he would be way better off to try to tackle this O’Reilly stuff.
“So, while I don’t mind him running the one-off O’Reilly race every now and then, I just think he’s going to be frustrated, because the results won’t, you know, the race started, he passed a couple cars. But it’s like Joey Gase and those guys, and he’s in a way better car than they are. He caught a few people, and that’s great, he was excited about that. But eventually he’s going to go, ‘Alright man. I know I need to take this car and I need to be running up here.’ And when he has that happen, he’s going to get frustrated.”
NASCAR officials have tasked him with performing to a level where they feel comfortable giving him approval to run larger tracks in the NOAPS car through his starts in ARCA, on all Truck Series tracks and short tracks in the second-tier division.
McFarland has also purchased a straight rail Super/Pro Late Model that he hopes to race all across the country. Earnhardt thinks that, plus a full season in ARCA, will really improve his overall race craft in advance of competing in the Great American Race.
“If he’s in it to have fun, run good, and still learn at the same rate, you can go do that in the ARCA series,” Earnhardt added. “He’s got a Pro Late Model that he built. Go run that. I mean, he’s got a race track. I would be at that race track running laps. … Like, right now, on a Tuesday he could be just running sets of tires at his track in his Pro.”
That is also very much his plan. McFarland will next compete this weekend at Michigan International Speedway in both the Truck Series for Niece Motorsports and ARCA for Rette Jones Motorsports.
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