Cleetus McFarland ARCA Move: Full-Time Run Reported for 2027

Reports from multiple motorsports outlets say YouTuber Garrett Mitchell, known online as Cleetus McFarland, is set to run the full ARCA Menards Series schedule in 2027. The Cleetus McFarland ARCA plan would put him in a Chevrolet prepared by Richard Childress Racing for a full Cleetus McFarland ARCA campaign, the team he joined earlier this year, and would mark a sharp step up from the part-time racing slate he ran in 2026. Neither Mitchell nor the team has formally announced the arrangement, so the plan is still unconfirmed.

The reporting traces back to Motorsport.com journalist Matt Weaver, who discussed the plan on an episode of Kenny Wallace's Burnout podcast after the Talladega race weekend. According to Frontstretch, which cited people with knowledge of the situation, Mitchell will drive the Cleetus McFarland ARCA entry for Richard Childress Racing in the next year of his deal with the organization, with manufacturer support behind the entry. Sponsorship, car number and crew chief have not been disclosed.

A part-time season that built the case

Mitchell, 31, built his audience as an automotive YouTuber from Bradenton, Florida, where his channel has more than 4.5 million subscribers, before moving into stock car racing. He made his ARCA debut in 2025 with Rette Jones Racing, running at Daytona, Charlotte, Bristol and Talladega, and signed with Richard Childress Racing in March 2026. His 2026 program mixed a pair of NASCAR O'Reilly Series starts at Rockingham in April and Nashville in May with three Truck Series races, four ARCA races, one ARCA East race and his first Super Late Model race.

The results gave the reported move some grounding. Mitchell finished second in an ARCA race at Talladega earlier in 2026, losing to Andy Jankowiak at the line, and he has spoken openly about taking the racing side of his career seriously. The Cleetus McFarland ARCA story has followed that arc: a creator with a large online following testing himself against full-time development-series drivers, one start at a time.

What the reported 2027 deal would change

A full Cleetus McFarland ARCA season would change the shape of that project entirely. Instead of dropping into selected races, Mitchell would contest every race on the ARCA calendar, with a shot at the series championship and a consistent team around him. According to Frontstretch, Richard Childress Racing is the favorite to buy the ARCA equipment of Joe Gibbs Racing, which closed its ARCA program after the 2026 campaign, and purchasing those owner points would guarantee a starting spot in the opening races of the season.

The same reporting says Mitchell will keep running part-time in the Truck Series alongside the ARCA schedule. Another creator is reportedly making a similar jump: George Siciliano, known as Squirrel McNutt, is expected to run the full ARCA schedule with Rette Jones Racing. The pair of moves would bring two of the sport's biggest online followings into a development series that usually fields a smaller group of full-season drivers.

The attention around the Cleetus McFarland ARCA reports says something about how the sport now finds its audience. RacingNews has noted that Mitchell's presence at NASCAR events brings fans to the track along with television ratings, and a full-season Cleetus McFarland ARCA entry would give that audience a reason to follow the development series week after week. For ARCA, a series built as a proving ground for young drivers, that kind of crossover attention is unusual. For Mitchell, it would test whether a creator who learned racing in public can hold up across an entire season against drivers who have raced full schedules for years.

What is still unconfirmed

For now, the key caveat is that no formal announcement has come from Mitchell or Richard Childress Racing. At Talladega on Oct. 23, Mitchell teased that an announcement was about a week away and described plans being finalized as cool and unexpected, without saying what they involved. His Talladega weekend ended in disappointment when he was caught in an accident in the Truck Series race, a result that did little to slow the speculation about his future.

Mitchell is also expected to race a dirt late model at the Gateway Dirt Nationals later in 2026, according to RacingNews, before attention turns to next season. If the Cleetus McFarland ARCA reports hold and the deal is formally announced, the formal announcement should settle the remaining questions of car number, sponsorship and crew chief, and confirm whether one of the internet's best-known car creators is about to become a full-time stock car driver. Related creator stories on this site include the fan petition that rallied support for Mass Effect and the viral soccer video that split viewers.

Sources for this story include the Tennessean report on the 2027 plan and the Frontstretch report on the Richard Childress Racing entry.