{"id":578706,"date":"2026-04-03T03:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T03:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/578706\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T03:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T03:00:08","slug":"cleetus-mcfarland-reacts-to-mark-martin-commentary-on-him-ahead-of-nascar-oreilly-series-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/578706\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleetus McFarland reacts to Mark Martin commentary on him ahead of NASCAR O\u2019Reilly Series debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cleetus McFarland has his fair share of detractors. He also has some NASCAR<\/a> legends in his corner, one being Mark Martin. <\/p>\n

Martin, the NASCAR Hall of Famer, is one of the millions who have tuned into McFarland\u2019s work on YouTube. He believes McFarland can drive, based on what he\u2019s done in Crown Vics. Martin is part of the McFarland fan club and to the 30-year-old, that means everything. <\/p>\n

\u201cI love Mark Martin. That guy has been so gracious to me. Honestly, him and Kenny Wallace have kind of been some of the few guys who have had my back. So, I love those guys,\u201d McFarland said Thursday on the Gluckcast<\/a>. \u201cI definitely feel like I am not a bad driver, you know? Especially in a car that has symmetrical grip, feel like I\u2019m very confident. It feels good to have their opinions sway that way, but I also know I have to learn to hopefully make those guys proud. <\/p>\n

\u201cI just can\u2019t believe how far these guys drive these things in the corner, I mean, they are so damn good at turning left. I just have such a gap to get to where I can be competitive but learning as fast as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NASCAR world will be watching Cleetus McFarland closely at Rockingham<\/p>\n

McFarland\u2019s NASCAR experience is five ARCA Menards Series races and one Truck Series start. This Saturday at Rockingham Speedway,\u00a0he will make his O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series debut. McFarland will be behind the wheel of the No. 33 Chevrolet, as part of a three-race deal he signed with Richard Childress Racing last month.<\/p>\n

The NASCAR world will be watching McFarland\u2019s every move as he looks to impress the sanctioning body enough for them to approve him for NOAPS superspeedway races. While McFarland admits he\u2019s nowhere ready to compete at the highest level, RCR came calling, and he simply couldn\u2019t turn down the opportunity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty in tune with what\u2019s going on, on the social media world. My job is probably more similar to yours than closer to the drivers. I am a social media guy, that\u2019s how I got into this position. So, I see it a lot. Closer to Daytona when I had the big screw up in the truck, I was feeling a little down on myself about that. At this point, the record is so broken of people still talking about, I don\u2019t care as much,\u201d McFarland told\u00a0Bob Pockrass\u00a0of\u00a0FOX Sports<\/a> on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, all these guys can say whatever they want about me, but if Richard Childress called them and said, \u2018Hey, wanna come drive our car,\u2019 all of them would have taken that opportunity, too. If NASCAR is letting me do it, I\u2019m in, I\u2019m here, and no one can save me but myself at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cleetus McFarland has his fair share of detractors. He also has some NASCAR legends in his corner, one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-578706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578706","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=578706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}