Cleetus McFarland competed in last weekend’s NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series event at Rockingham Speedway with the intent of being approved to compete in the upcoming series events at Talladega Superspeedway and Daytona International Speedway for Richard Childress Racing.
However, after his debut, in which McFarland nearly crashed multiple times and finished 32nd, six laps off the pace, NASCAR has chosen to withhold McFarland’s approval for superspeedways. McFarland confirmed that he hadn’t been granted approval for Talladega Superspeedway via a video posted to his Instagram and Facebook profiles on Tuesday evening.
“I’ve got a lot to learn,” McFarland admitted in the video post, and called the decision a “Kick in the nuts.”
However, while he was disappointed in the decision by NASCAR, he agreed that what he needed was more windshield time to help bridge the gap in his racecraft in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series.
Following McFarland’s video began making its rounds, NASCAR added some additional background on the decision not to approve McFarland for Talladega in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series.
John Probst, NASCAR’s EVP and Chief Racing Development Officer, explained that NASCAR is a huge fan of Cleetus and his platform and that the aspiring race car driver remains fully approved for ARCA and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series competition, but based on what they saw at Rockingham, the sanctioning body was not able to justify stamping approval for larger tracks just yet.
“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,” Probst said in a statement.
McFarland finished 37th in his lone NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start to date, which came in the season-opening event at Daytona International Speedway, a race where McFarland crashed out of the event on his own on the sixth lap.
While he has struggled in his first outings in the NASCAR National Series ranks, McFarland has shown respectable results in the ARCA ranks.
McFarland has two top-10 finishes in five ARCA Menards Series starts, and he also snagged his career-best ARCA platform finish of fourth at Rockingham Speedway this past weekend in the ARCA Menards Series East event.
