Why NASCAR denied Cleetus McFarland chance to race at Talladega as YouTube star
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Cleetus McFarland wanted to race at Talladega, and he likely had millions of YouTube fans rooting for him to get that change.
NASCAR has turned down his request, though.
The Athletic's Jordan Bianchi reported Tuesday night that NASCAR denied the influencer his request to race in the O'Reilly's Series race at Talladega on April 25. That's the second-tier of NASCAR, below just the Cup Series.
Cleetus McFarland isn't his real name, for the record -- it's Garrett Mitchell.
He has 4.7 million YouTube subscribers and millions of followers across his other social media accounts.
But they won't get to root him on at Talladega.
Why did NASCAR deny Cleetus McFarland for Talladega?
This is about safety from NASCAR's point of view.
“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,” said John Probst, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer, in a statement. “He is approved right now for O’Reilly Series short tracks, which means he’s good for all of ARCA, all of (NASCAR’s third-tier Truck Series), 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.”
Cleetus raced at Rockingham Speedway recently on the O'Reilly Series and spun out twice, half-spun twice more and placed 32nd out of 38 drivers.
Talladega's racing is even tougher, with drivers packed especially close together at high speed.
For now, Cleetus won't get the chance there.
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