Cleetus McFarland Says It Would Be Hard To Turn Down a Full-Time O’Reilly Series Ride

What’s Happening?

During the first episode of his new podcast Bald Eagles, Cleetus McFarland debated the pros and cons of whether he was to compete in NASCAR full-time, saying that a full-time offer would be hard to pass up.

YouTube star Cleetus McFarland, whose real name is Garrett Mitchell, has turned himself into one of the faces of NASCAR, despite racing part-time in the sport’s lower divisions.

Mitchell, who started his efforts as a hobby with the help of late mentor NASCAR legend Greg Biffle, has quickly turned to taking the sport more seriously, recently signing a part-time, two-year, three-race-per-season deal with Richard Childress Racing in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series.

Though he has expressed no real aspirations of racing full-time in NASCAR at some point, the 30-year-old has often stated that his goal of racing in the Daytona 500 is one step at a time.

For the most part, he has done this by being offered seats with teams, as opposed to inquiring about them. For example, in both his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series debut and his upcoming NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, both teams approached him about the opportunity.

Earlier this week, during the first episode of his podcast, Mitchell and his friend Squirrel McNutt, who is on his own journey through NASCAR, discussed how Mitchell would react if he were offered a full-time ride.

The discussion sparked from Mitchell comparing the demands of a part-time to a full-time schedule, saying that he cannot get “roped in” to a full-time NASCAR schedule, but that if Richard Childress were to ask him to race full-time, he didn’t know what he would say.

“We were talking the other day about how we cannot get roped into doing this full-time. I don’t know what I would do if Richard Childress called me and said, ‘I need you to run full-time in 2027.’ That’d be a hard phone call to turn down.
That would be hard for me.” — Cleetus McFarland

Mitchell then said to McNutt, whose real name is George Siciliano, that if he raced full-time, he would be giving up a lot, alluding to his automotive content creation, saying it would be “really fun, but also, [I] just dont know that it’s worth it.”

Closing out the discussion, Mitchell confirmed that as of right now, no team has offered him a full-time ride.

The Problems With Mitchell’s Rapid Ascension

Entering this season, Mitchell had just four ARCA Menards Series starts to his name.

With those races under his belt, he took on an offer from Niece Motorsports to make his Craftsman Truck Series debut in the series season opener at Daytona.

Ultimately, this decision would bear little fruit, with Mitchell spinning himself and wrecking out after just a handful of laps.

Though this created minimal controversy, with most pointing to a testing crash he had before he approved race at Daytona, the real heat came with the announcement of his signing with RCR.

For the most part, fans ridiculed the signing as a marketing stunt, given Mitchell’s massive following outside of NASCAR, pushing back at NASCAR for allowing him to race at Rockingham in the sport’s second-highest series with little experience, rather than criticizing Mitchell for taking the offer.

The deal, which will see him race at Rockingham, and with NASCAR approval after the Rock, Talladega, does grant him access to RCR’s deep pool of developmental resources.

While he may not have the experience, Mitchell is taking this seriously, getting in sim work through RCR and Chevrolet, and expressing his plans to buy and race a Late Model.

What do you think about this? Let us know your opinion on Discord or X. Don’t forget that you can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.