Cleetus McFarland scores top ten in ARCA Talladega adventure

While Lawless Alan earned his first career ARCA win, YouTuber Cleetus McFarland avoided the chaos and collected an impressive top-ten finish in the No. 30 Rette Jones Racing Ford. Nearly 70,000 people were watching the in-car camera as he took on the infamous superspeedway.

McFarland, whose real name is Garrett Mitchell, made his ARCA debut at Daytona earlier this year where he was involved in multiple wrecks before recording a DNF in 30th place. Talladega went a lot smoother for the popular internet personality, but it wasn’t without its fair share of drama.

On the grid, he forgot his HANS Device and was late in rolling off the pit lane. But once on track, he quickly moved from his 24th-place starting position to be running inside the top ten. But things started going sour soon after as his car began to fade. Reporting a potential engine issue, he fell back to 20th and lost the main pack’s draft. 

The team reported that it was an issue with the valve train and he could only ride it out, hoping the car doesn’t fully break before the finish. Well, that No. 30 Ford did not fail him as McFarland soldiered on, slowly creeping back to the front of the field.

It nearly came to an end in the final few laps when two cars crashed right in front of him on the backstretch. While evading, one of the damaged cars came back across the actually tagged the right-rear fender of McFarland’s machine. Narrowly escaping, he proceeded to pump his fists in the air while pacing under caution.

He later jokingly credited his cut-off sleeves for being able to avoid the late-race incident in an animated post-race interview, saying: “Tucked one of my wings and just dodged right out of there. I said, ‘hell no brother, you ain’t taking me out.'”

The race came down to a one-lap dash in overtime with McFarland restarting in 14th. Unfortunately, the field didn’t make it very far as a slow car triggered a multi-car pileup before even reaching Turn 1. McFarland again avoided the chaos, surging up to 10th place just before the caution flag flew, ending the race.

Cleetus McFarland and Greg Biffle

Photo by: Getty Images

McFarland gave an assessment of his race in a way only he could. “Brother, I thought we were done,” he told NASCAR on FOX.”Ilmor, the engine guys just came over here and pulled the valve cover off. Number six valve spring is broken in half. About five laps in, she just turned into a dog. And this #30 always hauls tail so I’m like, ‘what the hell is going on?’ Got my foot stabbed in there.

“I’m telling you, they’re getting on radio like ‘keep your momentum’ and I’m like, ‘brother, this sucker is wide open.’ You know what I’m saying? So we fell out of the draft and dude, it felt like I was riding a horse out there. You know what I mean? Everyone is blowing by me. And thankfully, a caution came out. We stayed on the lead lap. They come on the radio, Kevin Hamlin — shoutout to my boy, but he’s saying, ‘brother, you cannot get out of the draft.’ And they just start telling me stuff. I’m using knowledge from the Biff-meister [Greg Biffle]. He taught me everything I know. I got out there, read the air with the dog we had and stayed in there.

McFarland expressed a desire to return to stock car racing and even hinted at potentially putting something together for the ARCA race at Talladega in the fall, but nothing has been confirmed.