{"id":591505,"date":"2026-04-09T01:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T01:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/591505\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T01:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T01:57:09","slug":"cleetus-mcfarland-talledega-approval-nascar-makes-decision-on-youtube-stars-oreilly-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/591505\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleetus McFarland Talledega approval: NASCAR makes decision on YouTube star’s O’Reilly status"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cleetus McFarland will not race at Talladega in the NASCAR<\/a> O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series. The governing body in the sport did not grant him approval to do so, wanting to see more from him at this level of racing first.<\/p>\n

McFarland shared the news on a video posted to Facebook on Tuesday evening<\/a>. Among other things, he said NASCAR wants to see him race more in the Truck series and ARCA.<\/p>\n

\u201cLadies and gentleman, I wanted you to hear it from me first, that I have been denied by NASCAR to run Talladega in my O\u2019Reilly\u2019s car,\u201d McFarland said. \u201cMade my O\u2019Reilly\u2019s debut last Saturday with hopes of getting approval for Talladega, but they did not see enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cleetus McFarland, of course, is a popular YouTube star who has made his way into racing at nearly the highest levels of NASCAR. He\u2019s now gotten experience both in Trucks and the O\u2019Reilly level.<\/p>\n

His stint at Rockingham, which was going to be required to get approval for Talladega, didn\u2019t go great. It did earn him some respect from industry veterans<\/a>, but there was a lot to work on.<\/p>\n

\u201cGranted it was a pretty hectic race,\u201d McFarland said. \u201cI tried to pass someone three-wide on the third lap, spun out. Spun out a few more times. Didn\u2019t crash or crash anybody, but still, it was pretty hectic. Nonetheless, NASCAR has said we\u2019re going to need to see you run more ARCA and more Trucks. I\u2019m fully approved for Trucks, which I have some of those on my schedule coming up. But in O\u2019Reilly\u2019s I am still limited to short tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cleetus McFarland circumspect about opportunity<\/p>\n

The talented YouTube star wasn\u2019t beating himself up over NASCAR\u2019s decision when it came to Talladega. In fact, McFarland himself seemed to come close to admitting it was a long shot.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll in all this opportunity landed about two months ago,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we came up with the idea of running a superspeedway. It\u2019s not like we\u2019ve been planning this for a year, and I\u2019ve only been racing NASCAR for a year. It was never my mission to go out and climb in an O\u2019Reilly\u2019s car and get to the top as fast as I can. But we figured we\u2019d try, and it didn\u2019t get approved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cleetus McFarland fully plans on getting his skills up to speed, though. Eventually, the goal is to get on those superspeedways.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is what it is. I need more windshield time, regardless whether it\u2019s in an O\u2019Reilly\u2019s car, an ARCA car or a Truck,\u201d he said. \u201cMore windshield time is going to help me. I\u2019ve got a lot to learn, guys. So this isn\u2019t as much of a stepback or a pushdown as it seems. Little bit of a kick in the nuts, but I\u2019ve just got to get out there in other cars, do as much learning as possible, and then hopefully I\u2019ll get to run Daytona, Talladega next year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cleetus McFarland will not race at Talladega in the NASCAR O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series. The governing body in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-591505","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\/591505","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=591505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}