{"id":483285,"date":"2026-02-18T15:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T15:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/483285\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T15:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T15:46:08","slug":"dale-earnhardt-jr-weighs-in-on-controversial-cleetus-mcfarland-daytona-truck-race-whether-nascar-should-have-cleared-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/483285\/","title":{"rendered":"Dale Earnhardt Jr. weighs in on controversial Cleetus McFarland Daytona truck race, whether NASCAR should have cleared him"},"content":{"rendered":"

Garrett Mitchell, best known as Cleetus McFarland, made his NASCAR<\/a> Truck Series debut in this past Friday\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s aspirations of becoming a racecar driver, said that McFarland\u2019s inexperience showed at Daytona. Earnhardt wants to see McFarland get more reps in various series before getting back inside a NASCAR truck. <\/p>\n

\u201cCleetus 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,\u201d Earnhardt said Tuesday on the Dale Jr. Download<\/a>. \u201cIs 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. \u2026 He just needs to be racing more than he\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

\u201cI 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\u2019t tell us, but that probably wasn\u2019t too much fun, what happened [at Daytona]. So, why don\u2019t 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\u2019s getting involved in.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cleetus McFarland struggled at Daytona, Dale Earnhardt Jr. calls for him to gain more experience<\/p>\n

McFarland earned approval from NASCAR ahead of the race after passing a high-speed test at Rockingham Speedway.\u00a0Before Friday, the totality of his experience in NASCAR was five starts in the ARCA Menards Series in 2025. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy feeling is he doesn\u2019t understand what\u2019s about to happen in these situations,\u201d Earnhardt said. \u201c\u2026 If I was NASCAR, I wouldn\u2019t 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 \u2014 I wouldn\u2019t worry about that sh*t. I would be making him a racecar driver. He\u2019s got the clicks, they\u2019re coming, they\u2019re there\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI just don\u2019t feel like he\u2019s 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\u2019t mind they cleared him. I\u2019m not saying he shouldn\u2019t have been out there \u2014 he wasn\u2019t ready. \u2026 I don\u2019t have a strict standard in terms of approval and so forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Garrett Mitchell, best known as Cleetus McFarland, made his NASCAR Truck Series debut in this past Friday\u2019s season-opener…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-483285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}