"That Was Intense": How Cleetus McFarland's 1st O'Reilly Series Race Unfolded

Get to the next deal, so first set, stage here, we'll just try to figure out what you need and we'll go as good as we can. I have a wave, you ready? Ready. Green, green, green. Green, green. Rolling, rolling. Sharp 75 now. Still outside. Still outside 74, still there. Still there, clear. We're clear by two. What do you need? Still there. Still outside. All good, all good. Settle in. Here's what we saw. Oh, wow. Yeah, well that's three into one. And we know two wide is hard here, being three wide and being on the bottom, so this is an aggressive move. So he goes off, and yeah, just the track condenses. At the same token, you lose your right rear side force because you've got a car on the outside of you. This is all the things he had to learn, and Jesse Love mentioned it in his interview in the pre-race, where he said one of the things he was trying to teach Cletus about was the aero effects. And yes, Cletus ran well in the ARCA car earlier, which has less horsepower, but it also has an immense amount more downforce than these O'Reilly cars. Just past ten laps to go in the opening stage. Cory Day leading. Blake Lothian has it get away from him. He was one lap down in 34th. Right, just lost it there, being up high on the racetrack. It lacks grip as you get into the gray area up top, but then look at this right there. Ty, guess who that was? None other than YouTube superstar Cletus McFarlane. He's got an onboard. And here's what you were talking about, right? Oh, my goodness. Onboard with Cletus McFarlane. He's had a couple of moments early in this race. Welcome to the O'Reilly Series. Let's take a listen to his radio. Caution's out. Caution's out. Got one wrecked on the front. We're pitting right here. Pitting right here. Second gear. Three, two, one. Five, four, three, two, one. Wheel straight. All clear. Hit your lights. Four, red, and two, one. Now? You know, let's go back into field. And riding 31st, right, Cletus McFarlane. So much hype coming into the day. And they've really checked a lot of boxes this weekend, Dylan. Yeah, and the good thing is, he's still out there, right? 50 to go, and he's done what he wanted to do. He's run all the laps. So far, he'll be in three laps down. But it's been a pretty quiet and clean day after that scary moment the first couple of laps. Let's get some Starkey radio communication, though, and hear a big moment that he had just a few laps ago. ...enough to know that if you're saying the word inside, I should not go inside, rather than what I did. If I were inside, I'd go anywhere near it. ...do in that 88 car, but it really doesn't seem to matter what vehicle he's driving or who he's driving for, as the caution comes out. Will I give you and Dylan this one, since I took credit for Jeremy Clements? Possibly. Cletus McFarland around, seventh yellow of the day, and the Wheatland caution lights are on. Here, we're looking back. There's Swalich in the orange, who's the leader. So this is after Cletus had already started his slide. Boy, Cruz just barely snuck through there as well. Yeah. Yep, so this is about similar to what he did in the testing video, down into three. That is the toughest corner, entry-wise, here at Rockingham. The car gets incredibly light. The way it loads the banking, the front end loads first, which causes the rear to want to swap ends with the front. So it's incredibly tough, and definitely it's one of those things where when you get later on tires, later in this race, the grip level's changing constantly. You have to consistently adjust for that. Five more coming. Just keep doing your job. I'm coming to the white flag right here. Stay all the way down there, side by side behind us. All good. All right, just keep running the bottom here. Got the white. Just stay all the way down. Now the car's slowing. Good. One more coming. It's Cruz to the line here. Coming to the checkered. Cruz to the line right here. Good job, man. You finished it, even though we… You did good, man. You finished your first override race. That might be the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. That's a huge, huge step to take in a short amount of time. And we accomplished our goal. Got some things to work on, but you did great, dude.