Cleetus McFarland's Rocky O'Reilly Series Debut

It's April 5th. Welcome in. This is F1 News today, where your team meets AI. I'm Cory

with the story.

Garrett Mitchell, better known as Cletus McFarland, jumped into his first O'Reilly

series race at Rockingham Speedway, piloting the number, 33-car for Richard Childress Racing.

Over 250 laps in the sandhills, he battled hard, but crossed the line in 32nd place, six

laps behind winner William Sawallich.

The debut got wild quick, three-wide off the start with him sideways, dodging a spinning

Blake Lothian, pit road speeding penalties, and a bunch of half spins. He called it the

hardest thing he's ever done, admitting he got too ambitious early and abused the tires,

but he gained one spot overall, and it is.

Main goal of just finishing, he soaked up lessons on the fly, like watching team-made Jesse

Love save tires from the back and fixing his line on the radio.

It's spun plenty, almost wrecked a few times, but kept the car intact and didn't mess

up anyone else's day, just like Dale Jr. told him to stay low-key.

This whole run was NASCAR's approval test, so he could hit Talladega and months end, he's

got under a dozen stock car starts, and they don't want.

Ricky's piling into regulars.

Earlier that day, he snagged forth in the Arca East race for Red Jones Racing.

Team VP Danny Lawrence says he learned fast on this tough track, and would improve green

to checkered, though NASCAR might want another race first.

Series champ Justin Algyre gave props for Stan Clean when lapt and putting in the work

amid online noise.

Cleetus inspired up, see him at Talladega in two weeks.