{"id":713991,"date":"2026-06-04T06:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T06:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/713991\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T06:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T06:56:11","slug":"dale-earnhardt-jr-has-career-advice-for-youtuber-and-nascar-hopeful-cleetus-mcfarland-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/713991\/","title":{"rendered":"Dale Earnhardt Jr. has career advice for YouTuber and NASCAR hopeful Cleetus McFarland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By all accounts, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been very supportive of Cleetus McFarland, as the YouTuber born Garrett Mitchell methodically works his way towards what he intends to be an eventual start in the Daytona 500.<\/p>\n<p>This all began when McFarland struck up a friendship with the late Greg Biffle while doing charity work towards the hurricane battered North Carolina high country region. McFarland, who races a variety of cars and owns a short track in Bradenton, Florida, suggested to the former Cup Series contender that he wanted to work his way up to the Daytona 500.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Biffle was supportive but also made efforts to make McFarland treat his eventual progress with a little more diligence. Those figurative guardrails went away when Biffle died in an aviation incident back in December. <\/p>\n<p>Racing in the memory of Biffle, McFarland wanted to very quickly work his way towards Daytona but quickly realized that it was more challenging that even his respectful stance towards the industry gave credit for.<\/p>\n<p>But when Richard Childress Racing came calling with a proposal over the spring, that included a process-based pathway towards the highest levels, including starts in the NASCAR O\u2019Reilly Series, McFarland again began to dream of Daytona.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Read Also:<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/nascar-os\/news\/cleetus-mcfarland-spins-picks-up-penalties-in-tough-nascar-oreilly-race\/10825618\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"413\" height=\"275\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/aeaf568647ff99772e9f32d6ec95feef.jpeg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/nascar-os\/news\/cleetus-mcfarland-spins-picks-up-penalties-in-tough-nascar-oreilly-race\/10825618\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Cleetus McFarland spins, picks up penalties in tough NASCAR O&#039;Reilly race;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Cleetus McFarland spins, picks up penalties in tough NASCAR O&#039;&quot;}\" class=\"link \"> Cleetus McFarland spins, picks up penalties in tough NASCAR O&#8217;Reilly race <\/a><\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/nascar-os\/news\/cleetus-mcfarland-wavered-briefly-but-still-aims-to-race-daytona-500\/10826336\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"413\" height=\"275\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/6e23f93ddcb2864467224b909da655f1.jpeg\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/nascar-os\/news\/cleetus-mcfarland-wavered-briefly-but-still-aims-to-race-daytona-500\/10826336\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Cleetus McFarland wavered briefly but still aims to race Daytona 500;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Cleetus McFarland wavered briefly but still aims to race Daytona 500&quot;}\" class=\"link \"> Cleetus McFarland wavered briefly but still aims to race Daytona 500 <\/a><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been a challenging proposition. Even with successes in ARCA, at both superspeedways and short tracks, his starts in the Truck and O\u2019Reilly divisions have been a real education. The races, in an RCR car, have been a real handful for McFarland with multiple spins across Rockingham and Nashville.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>To that end, Earnhardt continues to support McFarland, but offered some advice on Tuesday on his Dale Jr. Download podcast\u2019s Ask Dale segment.<\/p>\n<p>Well, you know, (there) was lot of mistakes,\u201d Earnhardt said. \u201cListen, everyone who gets into racing who who gets into it is going to bust their ass under somebody. (Nashville) especially. \u2026 He\u2019s out there running laps and I don\u2019t think he ruined anyone\u2019s days \u2026 I thought he did fine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy whole feeling about his deal is, if he can get himself two full seasons or a couple of years in ARCA, running all the ARCA races, all of them. Short tracks, everywhere. If he could go do that, man, I think he would be way better off to try to tackle this O\u2019Reilly stuff.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, while I don\u2019t mind him running the one-off O\u2019Reilly race every now and then, I just think he\u2019s going to be frustrated, because the results won\u2019t, you know, the race started, he passed a couple cars. But it\u2019s like Joey Gase and those guys, and he\u2019s in a way better car than they are. He caught a few people, and that\u2019s great, he was excited about that. But eventually he\u2019s going to go, \u2018Alright man. I know I need to take this car and I need to be running up here.\u2019 And when he has that happen, he\u2019s going to get frustrated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>NASCAR officials have tasked him with performing to a level where they feel comfortable giving him approval to run larger tracks in the NOAPS car through his starts in ARCA, on all Truck Series tracks and short tracks in the second-tier division.<\/p>\n<p>McFarland has also purchased a straight rail Super\/Pro Late Model that he hopes to race all across the country. Earnhardt thinks that, plus a full season in ARCA, will really improve his overall race craft in advance of competing in the Great American Race.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf he\u2019s in it to have fun, run good, and still learn at the same rate, you can go do that in the ARCA series,\u201d Earnhardt added. \u201cHe\u2019s got a Pro Late Model that he built. Go run that. I mean, he\u2019s got a race track. I would be at that race track running laps. \u2026 Like, right now, on a Tuesday he could be just running sets of tires at his track in his Pro.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That is also very much his plan. McFarland will next compete this weekend at Michigan International Speedway in both the Truck Series for Niece Motorsports and ARCA for Rette Jones Motorsports.<\/p>\n<p>To read more Motorsport.com articles <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:visit our website;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;visit our website&quot;}\" class=\"link \">visit our website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By all accounts, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been very supportive of Cleetus McFarland, as the YouTuber born Garrett&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[924,49,48,19546,64735,153812,634,82],"class_list":["post-713991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-arca","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-daytona-500","tag-greg-biffle","tag-mcfarland","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713991","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=713991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}