Cleetus McFarland Talledega approval: NASCAR makes decision on YouTube star’s O’Reilly status

Cleetus McFarland will not race at Talladega in the NASCAR O’Reilly 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.

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

“Ladies and gentleman, I wanted you to hear it from me first, that I have been denied by NASCAR to run Talladega in my O’Reilly’s car,” McFarland said. “Made my O’Reilly’s debut last Saturday with hopes of getting approval for Talladega, but they did not see enough.”

Cleetus McFarland, of course, is a popular YouTube star who has made his way into racing at nearly the highest levels of NASCAR. He’s now gotten experience both in Trucks and the O’Reilly level.

His stint at Rockingham, which was going to be required to get approval for Talladega, didn’t go great. It did earn him some respect from industry veterans, but there was a lot to work on.

“Granted it was a pretty hectic race,” McFarland said. “I tried to pass someone three-wide on the third lap, spun out. Spun out a few more times. Didn’t crash or crash anybody, but still, it was pretty hectic. Nonetheless, NASCAR has said we’re going to need to see you run more ARCA and more Trucks. I’m fully approved for Trucks, which I have some of those on my schedule coming up. But in O’Reilly’s I am still limited to short tracks.”

Cleetus McFarland circumspect about opportunity

The talented YouTube star wasn’t beating himself up over NASCAR’s decision when it came to Talladega. In fact, McFarland himself seemed to come close to admitting it was a long shot.

“All in all this opportunity landed about two months ago,” he said. “And we came up with the idea of running a superspeedway. It’s not like we’ve been planning this for a year, and I’ve only been racing NASCAR for a year. It was never my mission to go out and climb in an O’Reilly’s car and get to the top as fast as I can. But we figured we’d try, and it didn’t get approved.”

Cleetus McFarland fully plans on getting his skills up to speed, though. Eventually, the goal is to get on those superspeedways.

“It is what it is. I need more windshield time, regardless whether it’s in an O’Reilly’s car, an ARCA car or a Truck,” he said. “More windshield time is going to help me. I’ve got a lot to learn, guys. So this isn’t as much of a stepback or a pushdown as it seems. Little bit of a kick in the nuts, but I’ve just got to get out there in other cars, do as much learning as possible, and then hopefully I’ll get to run Daytona, Talladega next year.”