Garrett Mitchell, best known as Cleetus McFarland, made his NASCAR Truck Series debut in this past Friday’s season-opener at Daytona International Speedway. McFarland, a social media sensation with over 4 million subscribers on YouTube, made it six laps before getting in trouble.

McFarland got loose off the exit of Turn 4 and crashed hard by himself. His day was done and he finished last in the 37-car field. Dale Earnhardt Jr., who has been a supporter of McFarland’s aspirations of becoming a racecar driver, said that McFarland’s inexperience showed at Daytona. Earnhardt wants to see McFarland get more reps in various series before getting back inside a NASCAR truck.

“Cleetus busted his ass off the corner, which I figured might happen. If you watched his test at Rockingham, which I did, he busted his ass off Turn 2 in a similar situation and got in the wall with his truck. They cleared him, which is fine,” Earnhardt said Tuesday on the Dale Jr. Download. “Is he ready to race trucks right now? No. Will he be, could he be? Yes. If I was NASCAR, I would be doing everything I could to get him better. … He just needs to be racing more than he’s doing, and he needs to get more experience and get better. What happened to him at Daytona could happen to anyone, happened to me, could happen to anyone.

“I just think he needs a bigger library of experience, so that he can be better at the truck and go back there and really compete. I want him racing in the Truck Series, I want him racing in NASCAR, I want him bringing his followers to our sport, I want him to have success, I want him to have fun. I would say that he probably wouldn’t tell us, but that probably wasn’t too much fun, what happened [at Daytona]. So, why don’t we, as a sport, get behind this guy and surround him with the tools, get him in the sim, get him all the experience we can get him, so when he does go out there, he knows what he’s getting involved in.”

Cleetus McFarland struggled at Daytona, Dale Earnhardt Jr. calls for him to gain more experience

McFarland earned approval from NASCAR ahead of the race after passing a high-speed test at Rockingham Speedway. Before Friday, the totality of his experience in NASCAR was five starts in the ARCA Menards Series in 2025.

Earnhardt said he watched him last year at Bristol Motor Speedway, where McFarland finished 17th, and he could tell he lacked the experience to be competitive at the short track. Earnhardt had no issue with NASCAR clearing him to race at Daytona, though he wants to see the league prioritize getting him ready to compete in the Truck Series.

“My feeling is he doesn’t understand what’s about to happen in these situations,” Earnhardt said. “… If I was NASCAR, I wouldn’t be worried about making content and making clicks and how can we put him in front of the camera and how can we make a YouTube video that gets 2 million views — I wouldn’t worry about that sh*t. I would be making him a racecar driver. He’s got the clicks, they’re coming, they’re there…

“I just don’t feel like he’s as good as he needs to be to be able to come out there and have fun and have a respectable result. At the same time, I don’t mind they cleared him. I’m not saying he shouldn’t have been out there — he wasn’t ready. … I don’t have a strict standard in terms of approval and so forth.”

McFarland is scheduled to run a partial ARCA schedule in 2026. It remains to be seen if he will get another start this season in the Truck Series.