After rain hampered the ending to the ARCA Menards Series race the day before, Cleetus McFarland looked to gain a full day’s worth of experience in Saturday’s (June 6) Craftsman Truck Series race at Michigan International Speedway.
He did just that, logging all 125 laps in the DQS Solutions & Staffing 250 powered by Precision Vehicle Logistics and bringing it home in 25th.
McFarland was ecstatic about his efforts in the race. “Corey Heim won, I basically got second, obviously, because I finished,” McFarland said. “I’m now 50 percent on my truck races.”
While it may be easy to scoff at that result and call it a failure, that ultimately is not the case. He’s just started his journey in NASCAR, with this being his fourth start in any of the three national series. Being able to complete a full race has given him a load of experience for his future starts.
“The whole day was a huge learning experience; finishing was enough for me,” McFarland said. “And what did we get 25th? 25th I mean that’s great. Honestly, that’s phenomenal.”
He’s proven that he’s learning from every mistake he’s made in each race. He mentioned how he avoided disaster on his spin around halfway through the race in turn 2, learning from his spin that ended his truck series debut after six laps.
“I think back to Daytona when I wrecked. The truck just stepped out, and I was like oh shit and turned down the track and wham.”
When I asked him what had been different this time, he said that while he felt like he had overreacted at Daytona, this time he knew what was happening and was able to diagnose the cause.
“I went in too fast, and I had dirty air, and I just knew that I was at the mercy of the slide.”
Cleetus is confident in taking what he has learned this weekend into Talladega as he feels he has learned more about how the trucks handle and is getting a better handle on where the limits are.
His trial by fire has been up and down, to say the least, but the only thing that will make him better is time and experience. He has eight ARCA starts under his belt and will continue to add more. He has one more planned start in trucks coming up at Talladega Superspeedway, where he almost scored the victory in the ARCA race in April.
As for his O’Reilly Auto Parts Series starts this year, they were at two very tough racetracks in Rockingham Speedway and Nashville Superspeedway, respectively. While the results were less than stellar in both races, the only way he’s going to learn difficult race tracks is by having track time on them.
No one can master something the first time they do it. Does that mean that any mistake made by him is free of criticism? Absolutely not. As long as he is actively seeking to right any wrongs he has made, then he’s doing the right thing given the circumstances of his upstarting NASCAR career.
That seems to be his mindset right now and he continues to celebrate all of the small victories that come his way as he continues to study from behind the steering wheel.
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