Why Cleetus McFarland is a sound investment for Richard Childress Racing

You have to separate Cleetus McFarland from Garrett Mitchell to see it sometimes but whatever name you call him, he is a deeply motivated albeit very inexperienced high-level racer with incredibly large ambition.

But literally everyone who has worked with Cleetus says the 30-year-old has the resolve needed to successfully navigate his way towards the Daytona 500. This includes everyone at Richard Childress Racing who quite literally hired him for reasons best articulated as quid pro quo.

According to Austin Dillon, Cleetus has something Richard Childress Racing needs and the race team has something only their personnel can provide the YouTuber turned semi-professional race car driver.

“I mean, from a sheer volume, he’s got a fan base that is massive and we want him to come in here and have fun at RCR; be himself and bring that to his people,” Dillon said. “For the group, it was really Ty (Dillon) that kind of led that with (president) Mike Verlander and they had several good ideas and it came together really fast.”

Cleetus has nearly 5 million followers on his YouTube channel. His ARCA and NASCAR live streams approached a million viewers each time.

In other words, RCR vice president Danny Lawrence says they hired Cleetus because he can make them a better organization in ways that do not immediately show up on the stop watch.

“Obviously, Ty is part of the family and he and Austin are getting more involved, and they felt very strongly that we could learn something from him on the social media stuff here at RCR,” Lawrence said. “Listen, we have raced and raced and raced here at Richard Childress Racing, and while we have a great social media team here, he’s got that whole world figured out.”

For his part, Cleetus said someone asked him if Ty Dillon could call him.

“I said sure and then Ty called me and he said, ‘Hey, we were talking as a team and we like what you’re doing but it looks like you need some help in the driver department,’ which valid,” Cleetus said with a laugh. “But he said they wanted to help me out and give me an opportunity to learn some things.”

Richard Childress Racing is paying him and they found the funding to support it with Tommy’s Express Car Wash.

“I wasn’t worried about making any money as a driver,” Cleetus said. “So the driver contract part was pretty easy and we struck a deal. That’s the short version of it.”

Lawrence said Richard Childress was immediately on board when his grandson brought the idea to their leadership group.

“Richard understands the reach of social media,” Lawrence said. “He’s on TikTok and he looks at Instagram. He looks at all this stuff. I’m sure he was aware of Cleetus because it was a big deal when he ran those ARCA races.

“Then Ty befriends him, brings this idea to Richard, and we have a team meeting and he told us ‘this cat has followers everywhere.’ But the jury was still out until he showed up here with Ty and met everyone.

So the next step was getting Cleetus to their campus in Welcome, North Carolina. Lawrence said Cleetus surprised them with his inherent racing knowledge in a way that made them think they could make this work.

“We had a moment where we were touring the engine shop, and most people don’t know this kind of thing but he was like, ‘yeah, that’s a R07 and that’s a SB2,” Lawrence said. “Then he’s like, ‘how much camber do you run’ and ‘how much caster do you run.’

“He’s not just a YouTube personality. He’s actually a racer. And we’re just fortunate enough to be able to give him an opportunity to put everything we can behind him and make this the best we can for everyone.”

This kind of innate racing knowledge wasn’t just experienced by RCR either. Cleetus runs all of his ARCA Racing Series starts through Rette Jones Racing co-owner and crew chief Mark Rette, whom detailed a similar experience.

Rette said Cleetus immediately knew how to read certain data screens because they are analogous to his drag racing experience.

“Obviously, this RCR thing has come up and they have good things to teach him, and they have sim data and he can read data with the best of them because they use that so much in the drag racing world,” Jones said. “The first time we looked at data together was some throttle traces from Ilmor a year ago.

“He immediately said, ‘yep, I know what I’m looking at’ because it was Holley-based and the software was identical to the software he is using for his drag racing stuff.”

It’s a familiar story but Rette was connected to Cleetus through the late Greg Biffle. Rette worked with Biffle at Roush Racing in the early 2000s and it was a combination of Biffle and longtime racer-turned-spotter Kevin Hamlin that put Cleetus in his care.

By itself, it’s actually a funny story. Rette was trying to learn who ‘Cleetus McFarland’ was while also fielding a preliminary phone call from ‘Garrett Mitchell.’ It took him a bit to realize these two potential clients were actually the same guy.

“All I knew was this is a friend of Hamlin and Alex Bowman,” Rette said with a laugh.

More than anything, because Cleetus is so tall, Biffle and Hamlin just wanted to make sure there was an ARCA team that could get him in a safe seat. There were some initial challenges on that front with teams not offering him the safest options to even turn laps at The World Center of Racing.

Rette said ‘we went testing at Daytona and the rest is history,’ and that it’s been an enjoyable ride thus far in the name of eventually reaching the Daytona 500.

First came a start in ARCA at Daytona and Talladega. Then came his Truck Series debut at Daytona last month, which required a test at Rockingham. Now, to race in the O’Reilly Series at Daytona and Talladega, he needs to test and then race Rockingham and an intermediate track.

From there, NASCAR will direct Cleetus what he needs to do to eventually compete in The Great American Race, but it’s one step at a time starting this weekend.

“The goal is to run the Daytona 500,” Cleetus said. “Like, that was the original reason I started all of this but in the original mission, I didn’t really understand what it took to do it. When I first called (Biffle) about it, I asked him if we could do it the next year and he said ‘well, that’s just not possible.”

“And now I’m of the opinion that I don’t want to run the Daytona 500, at the Cup level, until I can actually drive a car within a reasonable skill gap and be able to keep up with the main pack. If I went out there tomorrow, I would probably lose the lead pack.”

Cleetus McFarland crash

“The Truck race was tough because I made such a small mistake, right,” he said. “I over-corrected because I didn’t want to blow the whole field to smithereens. I probably could have saved it if I were a little lighter on the wheel.

“And that’s what I’m trying to learn. I don’t think I was super out of place in that truck field, despite all the people who think that, and that’s fine. If someone had an idea to run the Trucks race at Talladega, I would take that opportunity, and I could race in that field.

“I made a really small mistake that cost me. But I do think those guys are good and they’re crazy competitive, but I’m confident that with more training and discipline, I can be too.”

And make no mistake, Cleetus is starting to respect the nuances of this industry in ways he didn’t know any better when he first started.

Rette recalls an instance at Daytona where Cleetus was bouncing back-and-forth from his Niece Motorsports stall in the Truck Series garage to his Rette Jones stall in the ARCA garage. Charles Krall from ARCA communications stopped by to remind them that driver headshots were scheduled for 9 a.m.

“I told Charlie, ‘I’m not calling him’ because I wanted to see if he would show up without having to be reminded,” Rette said. “I was little nervous about him running back and forth because Biffle kept him focused on that side of it last year.

“And man, he was right on time to every meeting. He hit every engagement. I told Charlie afterwards ‘see, he gets it,’ like he’s starting to understand our business. It’s the little things right? He’s come a long way.”

All told, Rette said he’s learned not to underestimate Cleetus.

“He’s a guy,” Rette said. “He’s an entrepreneur. He’s a YouTube sensation. He’s a very smart guy. You don’t fly helicopters and airplanes, and you don’t do all the things he does in a drag car without a little bit of talent.

“It’s just a different kind of talent and teaching him and getting him up to speed has been a different kind of challenge.”