{"id":582689,"date":"2026-04-04T23:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T23:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/582689\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T23:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T23:38:11","slug":"cleetus-mcfarland-completes-first-nascar-oreilly-race-got-my-butt-kicked-but-i-finished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/582689\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleetus McFarland completes first NASCAR O’Reilly race: ‘Got my butt kicked but I finished’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cleetus McFarland officially has his first NASCAR<\/a> O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series race in the books. He finished the day at Rockingham, checking in at P32 but with a car that was mostly intact.<\/p>\n

Despite a few spins, McFarland avoided most of the major contact and came out feeling pretty good about his day overall. He shared how the experience went with Kyle Petty post-race<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cO\u2019Reilly, as predicted got my butt kicked,\u201d McFarland said. \u201cBut I finished the race. Our goal as a team was to finish the race and not get last. So we did meet our goals. We did have higher expectations, or higher wants \u2014 I think we got to 26th for a minute and I was like so excited just to hear that that literally the next corner I went in and spun out because I was just going too danged fast for my own abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many had their doubts about how the viral social media star would fare at this level \u2014 Cleetus McFarland included. Yet when push came to shove, he often looked the part.<\/p>\n

There were far too many self-induced spins to call it a good run. But, as noted, McFarland finished the race cleanly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI certainly did (try to follow others),\u201d McFarland said. \u201cI was already way back in the field, I got behind Jesse Love when he was saving tires. And I could catch him, but just watching his line, I was like, \u2018Shoot, I\u2019ve been doing that wrong all day.\u2019 Learned so much and the guys were helping me a lot on the radios. It was great.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean I think I spun out 50 times, almost died 10 times. And overall I\u2019m here with a car that\u2019s not destroyed. I didn\u2019t ruin anyone\u2019s day, which was my main goal. I did want to stay out of the news more. You know, Dale Jr. said, \u2018Please, stay out of the news.\u2019 That was my goal. But several times I just overdrove the corner, and then the one time I lost it and caused a caution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cleetus McFarland didn\u2019t completely stay out of the news. He was hit with a speeding penalty by NASCAR early on in the third stage of the race.<\/p>\n

Still, he came away from the experience sounding like a driver who wants more. He\u2019ll have at least two more races to go \u2014 his O\u2019Reilly deal with RCR was for three races.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I could get top 20 if I just eliminated a few of my stupid mistakes,\u201d Cleetus McFarland said. \u201cLet\u2019s talk about one that was really dumb. What was it, lap 3? I went three-wide on the bottom. I don\u2019t have enough skill for that. I don\u2019t know what I was doing, but I was excited and I had a run on the guy. I\u2019m like down to the bottom, then I lost it.<\/p>\n

\u201cLuckily I think I made everybody need a change of pants up there with me. But I didn\u2019t like slap up and take them up the hill with me or anything. Just went down, no scratches on the car and kept turning left for Biff.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cleetus McFarland officially has his first NASCAR O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series race in the books. He finished the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-582689","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\/582689","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=582689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}