{"id":585029,"date":"2026-04-06T03:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T03:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/585029\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T03:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T03:14:10","slug":"nascar-chief-admits-cleetus-mcfarland-may-not-get-approved-for-talladega-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/585029\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR chief admits Cleetus McFarland may not get approved for Talladega yet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"kicker\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t  NASCAR O&#8217;Reilly Series\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t  \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNews<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t                                                                                Sunday 5 April 2026 at 14:38<br \/>\n                                                                                                                                                            \u2022By <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ovalinsider.com\/profiles\/chris-deeley-167765\/\" class=\"author\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Deeley<\/a>\n                                      \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Richard Childress Racing\u2019s\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ovalinsider.com\/nascar-teams\/richard-childress-racing\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Richard Childress Racing\u2019s<\/a> vice president of O\u2019Reilly Series operations Danny Lawrence has admitted that he isn&#8217;t sure <a title=\"NASCAR\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ovalinsider.com\/nascar-news\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NASCAR<\/a> has seen enough to approve YouTuber Cleetus McFarland to run at Talladega later this month.<\/p>\n<p>McFarland ran his <a title=\"O&#039;Reilly Series\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ovalinsider.com\/nascar-news\/o-reilly-auto-parts-series\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">O&#8217;Reilly Series<\/a> debut for RCR at Rockingham on Saturday and, while he did finish the race, he did have to save near-spins a number of times before he spun properly in the final stage to bring out a caution \u2013 only just missing the inside wall.<\/p>\n<p>Lawrence admitted that there were &#8216;a lot of things&#8217; that NASCAR wanted to see before they approved McFarland for the legendary superspeedway, including a live pit stop, which they didn&#8217;t get to see at The Rock.<\/p>\n<p>McFarland seemed confident enough in a post-race interview, telling fans: &#8220;See you guys in two weeks at Talladega. That\u2019s right!\u201d[Note: that&#8217;s not right, the Talladega race is in three weeks]<\/p>\n<p>READ MORE: <a title=\"Cleetus McFarland earns first NASCAR finish after eventful race\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ovalinsider.com\/nascar-news\/cleetus-mcfarland-nascar-rockingham-finish-oreilly-series-debut-1080934\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cleetus McFarland earns first NASCAR finish after eventful race<\/a><\/p>\n<p>RCR chief: NASCAR might ask to see another race<\/p>\n<p>Seemed less convinced that his driver would get the go-ahead for the high-speed drafting track at the end of the month, telling <a title=\"Motorsport.com\" href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/nascar-os\/news\/cleetus-mcfarland-says-see-you-at-talladega-rcr-says-we-need-to-be-better\/10810915\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Motorsport.com<\/a>: &#8220;Well, it&#8217;s a big step. This is a hard race track and he did really good a couple of times where he could have spun the car out in front of everybody and didn&#8217;t. I think if we were to go green tomorrow, he would be way better.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He learned a lot in a short amount of time and I think it shows everyone what a big step this is going into the O&#8217;Reilly Series. I think he did a great job but we got to be better.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He continued: &#8220;Well, they&#8217;ll look at everything. They might ask us to run another race because the thing about it is we didn&#8217;t get to do a live pit stop. There were a lot of things they wanted to see happen that didn&#8217;t happen.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When he got sideways early, we automatically went into this conservation mode of just keep rolling and don&#8217;t push it too hard. So, it&#8217;s going to be close, but I would not be surprised if NASCAR didn&#8217;t want us to run another race before we got to Daytona and Talladega. Everything happens so fast there that we all want to be prepared when we do take him there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>READ MORE: <a title=\"Cleetus McFarland hits out at NASCAR critics ahead of O&#039;Reilly Series debut\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ovalinsider.com\/nascar-news\/cleetus-mcfarland-nascar-critics-oreilly-series-debut-1080588\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cleetus McFarland hits out at NASCAR critics ahead of O&#8217;Reilly Series debut<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR O&#8217;Reilly Series News Sunday 5 April 2026 at 14:38 \u2022By Chris Deeley Richard Childress Racing\u2019s vice president&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-585029","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\/585029","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=585029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}