Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Cleetus McFarland Interview

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

YouTube star and motorsports personality Cleetus McFarland joins Kevin Harvick on Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour from Talladega Boulevard to talk about his impressive 10th-place finish in just his second career ARCA Series race. Cleetus shares what it was like to compete at that level, how he prepared for the race, and what he's learned from his experience so far in the ARCA Series. The conversation also covers Cleetus' friendship with former NASCAR Cup Series driver Greg Biffle, his favorite type of race track, and the coolest car he's ever built. From wild builds to serious racing, this episode is packed with great stories and behind-the-scenes insight into Cleetus' journey from YouTube to the track. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

These people down here like two things. Booms and turn left. Squirrel, what the hell? Why did you buy the racetrack? Absolutely went all in. Wait a second. We raced the motorhome? When I won my first race, that infield is toast.

I gotta take a bite. It's pretty good, squirrel. Taste better than it looked. Oh, here's Kevin Harvick. Kevin Harvick. What's up, man? How are you? How are you?

Good to see you. Good to see you. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm doing great. How are you doing? I'm doing great, brother. Just finished 10th.

Welcome to our campsite, by the way. I'm definitely interested, and we're going to talk about these motorhomes. Yeah. I want you to tell me about your race today because you had some things that you had to work through today. Yeah. We started off great. About five laps in, the tone of the car changed, and it had broken the intake exhaust valve spring. And that was a battle.

All of a sudden, I was freaking hot dogging. having the time of my life. And I just started getting pulled off the pack. And when I made a little bit of a mistake, fell out of the draft. And then I was like just getting blown by by everybody. And we tried to fix it. Tried to check the plug wires, everything. The Ilmore guys said the valve train is really loud.

Yeah. But they let us go back out. And just had to work the air the whole time. That's good. You probably actually learn more doing it. that way. Yeah, it was kind of scary. Like, I could feel a couple times I got right on the edge of losing them. And I got real lucky and got to tuck back in. And I just had to stay tucked. Like about two cars is where I would start to get sucked away. And it was a really cool challenge, honestly. Well, that's good.

Well, you got your first top 10. Yeah. And so I, when I finished too. First finished. Well, that's always important. Just finished in the races is important. But I think for me, as I look around and I've kind of followed your stuff and just followed along, but all of a sudden it has become a little bit different than what you do normally. So how do you balance the entertainment side? You've got all this. And then are you a super competitive person?

Well, I'm definitely very competitive. Okay. But I also don't like cry when I lose, you know. So I love to win. I absolutely love to win. But I don't like have to go lay under a rock when I lose. So I'm very competitive.

You know, I beat Greg Biffle in a oval dirt track race earlier this week. That tells you how competitive I am. And it sucked to have that feeling. But, you know, when the car was slowing down and everything, but I just wanted to keep fighting, you know, we always have that fighting us. So you talk about being super competitive and you talk about Biffle. Yeah. How did you two get connected?

Well. And is his technical. position driver coach or is you just team supporter? He's the boss. He's the boss. Yeah. Okay. Life coach. There you go. Everybody needs one. Yeah. You know, Biff and I met, he came around to Crown Vic race, but then when the Hurricane Helene thing happened, he actually gave me a place to stay. We had met, we had probably talked for 30 minutes at the Crown Vic race. And then when Hurricane Helene happened and we were flying my helicopter on it, he gave me a place to sleep. And then we went to dinner and like, that was really the beginning of our friendship.

Yeah. And when you talk about the whole helicopter situation and everything that you guys were doing, that's obviously led to a bond that you guys probably didn't have and didn't know that you could have before that. And now you're out here running damn near 200 miles an hour. Yeah, yeah. And that, it's just been crazy. And like it goes back to what you asked me about the balance thing. Like I think I skipped over that. Like on the, this whole NASCAR thing is like, it's like, growing into being a bigger part of our balance. You know, we were like all drag race, all shenanigans, all fun, like this week.

And then Biffle is great in the reminder of like, hey, that you are about to go 200 for the next two hours. So like last night. When you hit something that's gonna hurt. Yeah, last night he's like, you know, you gotta lock in, go to the RV and get some sleep. We're obviously on Talladega Boulevard, so I had to go get, I had a different place to sleep

for just last night. All right. So tonight you're sleeping here? Yeah, yeah. I've slept in this every night this week. Okay. Soundproof, I assume it's well insulated. It's really quiet.

It's extremely well insulated. It's 1983 Winnebago Sunflower, but, yeah, he's helped me a ton with that balance of where I got to be a racer here and where I got to be, you know, Cleetus. And, like, the other racing I do, you can be way looser about the competitive side because the, you know, in drag racing, aside from reaction time, if you let off that button, the car supposed to do everything for you. You just point it. And this is so much more relying on the driver and your decisions and those split-second maneuvers, as you obviously know, like, and I'm behind the car still, I think. You know, I don't

think I'm with it totally. Yeah. So it's been interesting. So what, I mean, you obviously started this just for fun to try it, I assume. Yeah, yeah. And now it's kind of morphed into everybody wanting to know what you're going to do next. So, you You've run Daytona, you've run Talladega. So where does this budding Archer career head from here? That's a good question. I mean, we're going straight to the cup? No.

Okay, good. That's a great answer. Because I have sat, you know, I've never been a big NASCAR guy until this year. And Biff will help me, like, even get, step my foot in the door. But in just this one season, you and I have both watched. several people shove their way in the cup and look like fools. Yes. And I originally, when I called Biff, I'm like, I just, you know, I want to raise cup.

I'm like, we got to do this and this. And I think our original goal was the Ind or the Daytona 500, 2027. And I'm not saying that's off the board, but like now that I know just a smidge about NASCAR, I still think that that might be too early. Because them, them guys are on a whole other level. So are you going to, we have road course special. We have a short track specialist. Are you going to be a Super Speedway specialist?

That's what I want to be. Okay. That's my dream in life. Super Speedway specialist. I mean, I love the Super Speedway is like just the word Daytona and the word Talibaga. Like, they're so good. I love just, I don't know, there's something about it. Like, it's different here.

Yeah. I've been to the short tracks. I like Bristol. Yep. I haven't been to enough, maybe, so I don't know. I'm not going to lock that in. Well, I think for me, you're a great thing. You're a great example of actually what I try to tell people all the time.

And that is once you come to the racetracks, especially in an atmosphere like Talladega, if you haven't been here, you don't understand it. TV does not do it justice. Is that fair? Brother, I was saying earlier, you know, I've always been like the guy, you know, loves freedom the most. I haven't experienced freedom like this. Like I guess I didn't even fully know what freedom was until I walked down Talladega Boulevard.

I didn't either. I went for the first time last night. It's so, it's amazing. And all the people are so cool. Like, it's like nothing I've ever seen before. Yeah, you definitely TV does zero justice. Yeah, well, when I walked in for the first time last night, I walked, I parked the golf cart, I walked through the fence, and the first thing I saw was a completely naked girl walking down Talladega Boulevard. Yeah.

Just like nothing was wrong. Yeah. And I immediately felt uncomfortable. of course, but it was definitely a little bit of a culture shock for me. I've been so consumed with my motor home and the motor home lot and the garage and everything in there, so it was culture shock. It's unbelievable. I said earlier, these people down here like two things. Booms and turn left. You know what I'm saying? That's what they're here for. Yes. And that it's just how it is. All right. So you plan this race, and it seems to me like every time you have a race and you're going to, there's a plan that has to be developed behind it.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean. Squirrel, what the hell? That's yours. Will you lock in? Will you lock in? All right. That's your burger that he just slipped and it went to grass. Is it Kevin's sleeves throwing you all? Oh, what the hell?

Hey, look at this. I had, I thought about cutting them off, but here's the problem. We can cut it off. I haven't had my, look at this. That's from cleaning. We can get your sun bog. That's exactly right. I don't think, I don't think my body has seen sun since. Don't me rub a little olive oil on them?

No, I think I'm good. I think I'm just going to let them peel and be flaky for the rest of the day. All right. So, so the, the Daytona plan was that last minute? Yeah, yeah. I think we made it to the Daytona test by about, like, well, we locked in with with Red Jones racing the week before. So that was Mark's fault.

He was slow to the punch? No, no, no. We actually... No, please blame it on Mark. All right. Mark's definitely a fault too, but... Biffle and I found a team... We went and sat in the car.

It was a Gen 4 car. I didn't fit. So then we were scrambling, kind of looking for someone. Biffle said, hey, let's just wait until, you know, next year, maybe run a couple short tracks this year. And then, uh, Red Jones, I guess, had... their driver maybe fall out or I don't know a lot of sponsorship whatever so we we got in there I went I fit in the car we said we're running Daytona we went and did it we did the ARCA test and then here we go so you come to Talladega and I look at these motor homes yeah explain to me how the ARCA plan came together and what we're sitting in front of and how how these motor homes got to where we are today yeah all right so When we did finally get the plan together to race, we got, you know, we said we're going to run Daytona and Talladega, the two super speedways.

Yeah. And I knew for Talladega I wanted to do something more fun because we had more time. Obviously, we're only a couple hours from Daytona where we live. So we came up, me and Squirrel came up with the idea of doing a $5,000 RV challenge. So we got, and we had to invite Biffle to be one of the team leaders because he's going with us anyway. So we flew to Charlotte. There's three teams. We each got five grand and we had to go buy RV.

So George and I found this 1983, Winnebago Sunflyer with a 454 big block and a turbo 400. Floorboard gets hot. Well, that's actually true. That's very true. I had a box fan that was just about like this. So $4,200 for this one. We had to get it running.

It took a few hours, but we got her going. hours but we got her going and then Biffle cheated bought this Allegro bus two days prior even though he said he didn't see it you know we don't know he bought the Allegro bus also has a big block and then Zach and Ty bought this Ford Tiago and funny enough they had a serious mold issue going on and on the dirt track their microwave oh actually their refrigerator flew out of its holding position, laying it on their fire signature, blew it off on the interior. So that one's the worst, this one's the best.

We won the circle track race against Biff, we won the drag race. Wait a second, we raced the motorhome? Yeah, we raced them on Harris Speedway, five lapar. Oh my god. Yeah. I didn't realize that we were racing the motorhomes. Oh no, we raced them. And then we took them to tail the dragon, 318 curves and 11 miles, wore out the front on mine.

That kind of pissed me off. But other than that, you know, they've been really, really, really truck. We had a bad fire in ours, so we do have a little bit of interior fire damage, but... So when we're done, are you thinking that we're going to put these in a pile and burn them, blow them up? What are we going to do with them? Honestly, we're really struggling with what to do with them. I think what we should do is we should get a monster truck and we should line them up and we should just jump right over the top of them and just blow them apart. Mow them down.

That's not a bad idea. In the time, I was, we had a, back when Stewart was driving my Exfinity cars, we had a kid rock car. And they built this marketing program around it. So we had a monster truck that went to all the Monster Jam things as well. And my aunt, or my wife's aunt, she had this 1988 Pontiac Bonneville. So I had them take her to lunch, and I went and bought her a new car first. And I parked it in the garage. So we took them to, we took them to lunch.

And when they came around the corner, we took this monster truck. and had it built, and I just absolutely destroyed her bonneville. She cried for a little bit, and then we gifted her. That's cool. Gifted her in the new car. So along the way, I think you definitely have to blow them up or something when you're done. I don't know. Like, I don't really know what else to do with them.

We're thinking about. Or leave them here. You think I could just leave them? What are they going to do? Call me? I'll just ignore their call. Yeah. I would say that they could become sort of a historical.

landmark of Talladega Speedway. I was actually thinking about renovating it and just bringing it back next to you. Like putting some new, the floor's a little soft, so I was gonna put some fresh plywood in it, get it dialed back in, bring it back. I mean, everything kind of works in it, so I don't know.

It's been tough. You thought of anything yet, Squirrel? Thought about putting it up for Austin, Bear Jackson or something? Bear Jackson, that's not a bad idea either. That's actually a pretty good idea. You could probably pull some money. So, you have your own racetrack. You've built this whole,

just massive business around around what you do. And I'm super intrigued because I like to just have my hands in a lot of little things. I know that. Don't you own the golf carts? I do, yeah. I love that. Yeah, we got you a golf cart on about Wednesday. Mark called me.

Oh, I haven't seen it. He said, hey, I don't know that Cleetus understands how far from the garage he is and we have no transportation back and forth. Mark named after me because I haven't seen that golf cart one time. No. That's not it. No, that's not, that's Fox. His Fox hunt on it. Oh.

Brother, I haven't seen a golf cart. So Mark ran in a golf cart for himself. He stole it. Apparently. And he named drop to me. He named after me. He doesn't have to name drop. I know him.

I know him fairly well. So he was really concerned that you're making sure that you were focused getting back and forth to the garage. Typical racer. That's cool that you own that business though. Overthinking it. I mean. So you own the racetrack.

Yeah. Why did, why did you buy the racetrack? What was it? the intent of the racetrack. What the hell is going on back here, brother? All right. So, okay. Deep it down, Willie.

We're trying to do the freaking podcast. He's fine. So I bought the racetrack because at the time, my channel had been growing and YouTube was kind of cracking down on, you know, doing dangerous stuff on the street, you know, illegal activity. Like, when we would be able to, you know, say, it's a quarter of the course. with a turbo, we'd just take it out to the front road and see what it would do, you know. And I wanted a playground more so that I could work with and I actually didn't really know that I wanted it at the time, but our drag strips right next to this oval track, you know, the local

drag strip. So I was at the drag strip one day and I'm kind of looking over there and I'm like, what a dump. And then a few months later I'm at dinner with a friend that actually owns the drag strip. And it just clicked that like, why don't I have a bought a circle track and we'll revamp it on YouTube. Yeah. And this other guy had been demolition ranch had been really successful with an abandoned mansion series.

I was like, maybe I'll do an abandoned racetrack series. We bought it and it just put the afterburners on our YouTube channel on. And the rest is history. I basically, I risked everything to get it. I went down past zero. Got personal loans from

friends that were willing to do it and just to buy the racetrack. Absolutely. went all in. My IRS check bounced that spring and just like, ketchup, yes. Catch up, yes. I'm okay. I'll have ketchup. Yeah. You got at least hold it or he'll get pissed. I'll eat it.

Okay. I'll have a smiley face on there for you. Thank you. I appreciate that. So we just went all in and it turned into the perfect playground for YouTube creation and content and just took our channels to the next level. Thanks, boss. Is this the one you dropped on the ground?

Nope. Okay, good. Let's see if I can spill it. I got to take it by it. It's pretty good, squirrel. It tastes better than it looked. Thank you, brother. So we have the circle track and we have everything else that you do.

What's the coolest car you've built? Well, I have one car that I own but didn't build. That'll do like 240. Did you go 2.49? 240 and a quarter mile, you know? What? That thing gets down. It's a 1969 Camaro.

We call it Eagle. Okay. But I didn't build that. A chassis shop called Cameron Johnson RaceCard. He's built it for me. The coolest one that we've built on the YouTube channel is probably the three truck that Junior was driving last week. Yeah.

You know, that's an old Mike Skinner truck I bought in the early days my YouTube channel, like maybe 2018. Yep. And we converted it to four-wheel drive. you know, 1,500 horsepower on a moderate tune-up, twin turbo, and it'll blow your mind. Yeah. And like you did, the junior. It looked cool.

I don't know that I've ever seen Dale that happy. Yeah, he was fired up, right? He was fucking jacked up. Yeah. He was jacked up when he got done. We built that totally in-house. Never, you know, that's everything was done in my shop by my guys, Zach Ty, Jackson, Sam. Yeah.

And so we're really proud of that one. Yeah. It's cool. But we have built a few cars that run six. So I consider, when I saw Dale doing that burnout, I think that I did some of the better burnouts in racing. Really? I was the first one to get yelled at at the brickyard for doing a burnout across the bricks. They were really pissed at me for doing my burnout.

What are you supposed to do? I didn't. At that point, I didn't really care. But we did the burnout all the way down the front straightaway, across the bricks, until the tires blew out. It blew the fenders off. So if you ever win one of these races, have you ever thought about what might happen afterwards? Do you have a plan in your head? Let me tell you something, Kevin.

Whether it's probably going to be ARCA when I win my first race. Anything. That infield is toast. It is done. There will not be a blade of grass that has not been overturned by my race car when I'm done with it. And the burn, I mean, I'm going until the motor or the tires blow. That's what I, I'm going to tear that. F and front straight up.

And I, I mean, they're going to have to come out there with a bulldozer to stop me. I've been putting it on record. I've already been talked to by NASCAR about it. They said that would be really bad to ruin the infield before Cup. But what am I supposed to do? Ask, just play dumb, ask for forgiveness later. Well, I'll just tell them you told me it was okay. Absolutely. Tell them I told you they love the fact that we tear their stuff up.

And we rate on the podcast, we rate all the burnouts every week. Oh, you do? Yeah. Oh, I'm going to get in all that. And so the best one we've had this year was Chase Elliott at Bowman Gray. He drifted backwards all the way around the racetrack about that far from the fence. And last year it was SVG when he held his. hand outside the window and Austin Hill was flipping him off. And he followed him all the way into the pits

burning the tires out at Sonoma while he was flipping him off outside the window and just did a burnout right behind him right beside him all the way back to pit road. So last question. What was your first car? My first car was a, I believe, 2,000 Chevrolet Trailblazer with about 230,000. thousand miles on it. Okay. You bought it? Somebody give it to you? Nope.

My dad bought it. Did you wreck it? Nope. We sold it. We sold it, yeah. And then I got a clapped out Nissan Titan, which I thought was way cooler. Yeah. It was just, it was kind of like our barn trailblazer.

Like we used it around, I kind of lived on a little bit of acreage and we had horses and stuff. Yeah. And then when I was able to drive to school, my dad was like, you know, just take it. Perfect. That was the start of it. Well, I appreciate you taking the time today. I'm happy that you were able to finish the race. That's always the first goal is to finish the freaking race.

I know. Daytona was a bummer for me. I really got, I missed out on so much fun. Like, the end of, I don't want to talk to Europe, but the end of this race was so cool, like, actually driving NASCAR. Because, you know, the first 40 laps were kind of boring. And then last 20, 30, we're like,

we're changing lanes. Kevin Hamlin's yelling at me. Down up, down up. Up here, there's people wrecking, it was incredible. There's nothing that touches it. So that far as drive. I love the enthusiasm and everything that you have for, and it's been just fun to watch, I guess, your passion for NASCAR accidentally happen,

and here you are, and it's turned into all this. So congratulations. Hey, thanks, brother. Appreciate you taking the time here with you. Well, thank you for taking the time. We appreciate it. Yeah, really appreciate you having me. No problem.