In a video posted to his Facebook page on Tuesday evening, Garrett Mitchell dba Cleetus McFarland says NASCAR has not approved him to run superspeedways in the O’Reilly Series at this time.
“They did not see enough,” Cleetus said. “Granted, it was a pretty hectic race. 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 need to see you run more ARCA and more Trucks, and have some of those on my calendar, coming up but in O’Reilly, I am still limited to short tracks.”
In the video, Cleetus concedes he’s only been in NASCAR for ‘one year’ and that ‘it was never my mission’ to get to the top as fast as he could.
“We figured we would try,” he said. “We didn’t get approved. It is what it is. I need more windshield time, regardless of whether it’s in an O’Reily car, ARCA car or Truck. More windshield never isn’t going to hurt. I have a lot to learn guys.”
He’s says ‘it’s a kick in the nuts’ but not as much of a letdown as it seems.
“I just need to get out there more and do as much learning as possible and then hopefully I’ll get to run Daytona and Talladega next year.”
Richard Childress Racing’s Danny Lawrence suggested this might be the outcome on Saturday telling Motorsport.com that he suspected NASCAR would want to see more out of the 31-year-old YouTuber.
“Well, they’ll look at everything,” Lawrence said. “They might ask us to run another race because the thing about it is we didn’t get to do a live pit stop. There were a lot of things they wanted to see happen that didn’t happen.
“When he got sideways early, we automatically went into this conservation mode of just keep rolling and don’t push it too hard. So, it’s going to be close, but I would not be surprised if NASCAR didn’t want us to run another race before we got to Daytona and Talladega. Everything happens so fast there that we all want to be prepared when we do take him there.”
NASCAR EVP and Chief Racing Development Officer John Probst also indicated this earlier today on the Sanctioning Body’s Hauler Talk podcast.
“We’re all huge Cleetus fans. We all watch his videos and are certainly very appreciative of everything he’s done in our sport and will continue to do in our sport. He is approved right now for O’Reilly Series short tracks, which means he’s good for all of ARCA, all of truck, and then O’Reilly up through the short tracks. We’d like to see more out of Cleetus in the short tracks. So we’re not saying no, but there is more that we would like to see out of Cleetus before we would approve him for Talladega.”
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