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Cleetus McFarland causes major wreck during ARCA restart at Charlotte

JHby:Jonathan Howard•05/23/25•

Jondean25

Cleetus McFarland ARCA wreck
Screenshot credit: ARCA Menards Series via X.com

Disaster on the restart at Charlotte for the ARCA Menards Series as Cleetus McFarland spins his tires from the front. The YouTuber stayed out on old tires to get track position. With his limited experience leading the field on restarts, it ended up being a terrible decision.

Cleetus McFarland spun his tires, and soon, the whole field was piled up and wrecked. Isabella Robusto took the worst of it. Her string of bad luck in this series continues in 2025.

Why did McFarland’s team put him in that situation? He is not out here to win races right now. This is his first-ever intermediate track start. Put in a bad situation and had nowhere to go. Robusto gets side-swiped into the wall before the start-finish line and then gets hit again, spinning to the infield.

The attention that Cleetus McFarland brings to ARCA race is great. But let’s be honest, he’s not converting his tens of thousands of fans into long-term race fans. They are in it for the YouTube personality that they have spent years supporting.

Let’s take away the Cleetus fans. Let’s take away the 40,000+ watching his in-car camera. If this were a random YouTuber or content creator with a smaller following who did this, the pitchforks would be out.

For all of the criticism that ARCA and the drivers get, at least most of these low-budget teams have skin in the game each week. They show up and do what they can with the limited resources that they have.

Now, a bunch of cars are torn up because Rette Jones Racing wanted to put their YouTuber on the front row, and for what? A photo-op of the 30 car up front with Cleetus in it? I hope they are happy with the “highlight” they got.

Cleetus McFarland causes chaos early

The race continues with Austin Green and William Sawalich battling it out. Sawalich was one of the cars involved in the Cleetus McFarland wreck. The No. 30 car is still in the race and appears to be competing for a top-five finish, if there are no more issues.

Grant Enfinger is hanging around there near the front. After Green, Sawalich, and Enfinger, there is quite a drop-off in the speed of these cars. McFarland isn’t going to be able to keep up with those leaders.

Brenden “Butterbean” Queen got into the wall early in the race after a tire went down. He went down a couple of laps but is hoping to catch caution flags to get the lucky dog. He is still running times consistent with the leaders. Sawalich and the others definitely don’t want to see Butterbean back in their rearview mirrors.