{"id":517835,"date":"2026-03-06T09:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T09:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/517835\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T09:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T09:09:08","slug":"nascar-insider-sheds-new-light-on-cleetus-mcfarland-deal-with-rcr-addresses-rampant-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/517835\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR insider sheds new light on Cleetus McFarland deal with RCR, addresses rampant criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cleetus McFarland has a dream of one day making it to the NASCAR<\/a> Cup Series. To accomplish that, he has to make his way through NASCAR\u2019s approval process.<\/p>\n

McFarland, who made his Truck Series debut last month at Daytona International Speedway, announced Wednesday he signed a part-time deal with Richard Childress Racing to compete in the O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series<\/a>. His first NOAPS start will come Saturday, April 4, at Rockingham Speedway. McFarland then plans to run at Talladega Superspeedway and Daytona. <\/p>\n

Jeff Gluck of The Athletic provided further insight on the process McFarland has to go through. Speaking on the \u201cGluckcast<\/a>,\u201d Gluck revealed that it\u2019s no guarantee McFarland will be approved to compete at either superspeedway. How he performs at Rockingham will determine his next steps. <\/p>\n

\u201cNASCAR\u2019s already approved him for all the Truck Series races and the next step once you\u2019re approved for Truck races is to run O\u2019Reilly Series short tracks. So, had he asked, he may have gotten approved for those already,\u201d Gluck said Thursday. \u201cNow, he\u2019s not running short tracks which, to me, is a smart move because, obviously, he has a major lack of experience, we all know that. He\u2019s trying to run superspeedways which are, again, arguably from a driver standpoint, seem easier. <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 In order to approve him to run on a superspeedway, he\u2019s gotta run at least something else in O\u2019Reilly first. So, he\u2019s going to do this Rockingham race in order to get approved for Talladega. Now, it\u2019s no guarantee that he\u2019s going to get approved for Talladega, this is not just a rubber stamp moment. I talked to NASCAR about this \u2014 there\u2019s a chance he could crash or not run well enough, and they can say, \u2018you know what, you\u2019re not ready for Talladega yet.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Cleetus McFarland is moving up the ladder in NASCAR <\/p>\n

McFarland, the YouTube sensation, is light on experience in motorsports. The extent of McFarland\u2019s experience in NASCAR is four starts in the\u00a0ARCA Menards Series\u00a0last season, and another this season at Daytona. He is set to run a part-time ARCA schedule in 2026 for Rette Jones Racing.<\/p>\n

His Truck debut at Daytona didn\u2019t last long. He crashed hard by himself just six laps into the race. McFarland was approved to make his Truck debut at Daytona after passing a high-speed test at Rockingham. The 30-year-old crashed during the test.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many, including Freddie Kraft, have been critical of NASCAR for approving McFarland<\/a> despite his lack of experience and success. Gluck explained why he has no issue with McFarland being granted approval.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, I get the people who are saying, \u2018this is too early, he\u2019s too rushed,\u2019 and they\u2019re criticizing him for trying to climb up the ladder like this,\u201d Gluck said. \u201cTo me, look, if he does crash and he takes out an O\u2019Reilly contender as he\u2019s being a lap car or whatever, everybody absolutely has the right to be upset and criticize him, and he will be criticized. <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 To me, a superspeedway is about if you\u2019re gonna be a safety hazard to others. Also, the only way to get experience at those types of tracks is to go do them. I don\u2019t have a problem with how he\u2019s trying to do this because he\u2019s doing superspeedways. If he was coming in and saying, \u2018hey, listen, I\u2019m trying to do all these other tracks without this experience,\u2019 I\u2019d say, \u2018ooh, let\u2019s pump the brakes on this one.’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cleetus McFarland has a dream of one day making it to the NASCAR Cup Series. To accomplish that,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-517835","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\/517835","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=517835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}