{"id":587554,"date":"2026-04-07T07:34:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T07:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/587554\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T07:34:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T07:34:17","slug":"mark-martin-defends-cleetus-mcfarland-nascar-oreilly-performance-at-rockingham-i-think-he-can-drive-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/587554\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Martin defends Cleetus McFarland NASCAR O’Reilly performance at Rockingham: ‘I think he can drive’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Martin is showing support for Cleetus McFarland, who competed in the NASCAR O\u2019Reilly Series race at Rockingham this past weekend. On this week\u2019s Door Bumper Clear podcast,<\/a> Martin reacted to McFarland\u2019s performance in his first O\u2019Reilly race.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t exceed my expectations,\u201d Mark Martin said. \u201cI expected him to run about like he ran. He had a lot of assets going into that with the test and all the people that were surrounding him and helping him. I said on social media, \u2018Yeah, this place is a lot harder than Daytona, eh?\u2019 And it is. Dude, you don\u2019t have any idea what it takes in the middle or the latter part of the pack at Rockingham. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a tremendous challenge. He still got over his skis multiple times, but his driving talent saved it. Many other drivers would have wiped that car out in some of those slides and events that he had. I give him credit for that. I think he can drive. He\u2019s just got to learn to drive these cars on these tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cleetus McFarland finished 32nd<\/a> and six laps down at Rockingham. The YouTube star is scheduled to compete in the O\u2019Reilly races at Talladega and Daytona, but he will likely have to compete in additional races to get NASCAR\u2019s approval to race at the superspeedways.<\/p>\n

Cleetus McFarland loves representing Richard Childress Racing<\/p>\n

McFarland drove the No. 33 Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing. Ahead of the Rockingham race, McFarland reacted to being part of a historic organization. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo have the opportunity to make my NASCAR O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series debut with a legendary race team like Richard Childress Racing is a dream come true,\u201d\u00a0he said in a press release<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge honor, and I am incredibly grateful to learn under the leadership of Richard Childress, Mike Verlander, Danny Lawrence, and everyone in Welcome, North Carolina. Having Tommy\u2019s Express on board for my debut makes it even more special. They\u2019re a fast-forward brand that understands speed, performance, and connecting with people, which lines up perfectly with everything we are trying to accomplish.\u201d<\/p>\n

McFarland also competed in the ARCA Menards Series East race at Rockingham and finished fourth. At the start of the season, the 31-year-old made his Truck Series debut at Daytona and finished 37th after crashing on Lap 6. McFarland has over 4.6 million YouTube subscribers and is the owner of Freedom Factory, a racetrack in Manatee County, Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Martin is showing support for Cleetus McFarland, who competed in the NASCAR O\u2019Reilly Series race at Rockingham…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,24807,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-587554","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-mark-martin","11":"tag-nascar","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587554","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=587554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}