- Richard Childress Racing confirmed that Cleetus McFarland, whose real name is Garrett Mitchell, will run the full 2027 ARCA Menards Series schedule in the No. 33 Chevrolet, per Motorsport.com.
- Mitchell said in January that after Greg Biffle’s death he did not want to step foot in a NASCAR garage again.
- The 20-race season opens at Daytona on February 20 and ends at Kansas on October 1, with Robert Strmiska as crew chief.
The YouTuber Who Wanted to Quit Is Now a Full Season ARCA Driver
A month after Greg Biffle died, Garrett Mitchell made a video for his audience and said something blunt. “I’ll admit to you guys that a month ago when everything happened, I didn’t want to ever step foot in a NASCAR garage again,” he said. “I didn’t want to race.”
On Wednesday, October 28, Mitchell, known to millions as Cleetus McFarland, did the opposite. Richard Childress Racing announced that he will contest the entire 2027 ARCA Menards Series. For a man who once wanted out, it is the biggest commitment of his racing life.
What RCR Announced
The program puts Mitchell in the No. 33 Chevrolet with Robert Strmiska as his crew chief. It starts at Daytona on February 20 as part of the Daytona 500 undercard and runs 20 races, ending at Kansas on October 1. The calendar covers short tracks, superspeedways, intermediates, road courses and even dirt ovals, so Mitchell will see nearly everything stock car racing offers in a single season.
Few drivers attempt all of it. Fewer than 12 usually run the full ARCA schedule in a given year, and Thomas Annunziata won the 2026 title on a tiebreaker. ARCA sits at the fourth level of stock car racing, behind the three national divisions, on the developmental ladder below NASCAR.
Mitchell signed a two-year deal with RCR earlier this year and has already made two NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series starts for the organization, at Rockingham and Nashville. He also made three Craftsman Truck Series starts with Niece Motorsports. The national divisions have been hard on him. ARCA has been kinder: across eight starts in 2025 and 2026 he took a pole at Michigan and finished second at Talladega, where he led 19 laps. He also placed fourth in an ARCA East race at Rockingham. All of those starts came with Rette Jones Racing.
Mitchell said the full schedule gives him the chance to become the best race car driver he can be. “Richard Childress and everyone at RCR believes in me, and having the support of a legendary team gives me a ton of confidence to focus on learning everything I can about stock car racing,” he said. RCR president Mike Verlander said Mitchell’s work ethic has impressed everyone at the organization. “He’s earned this opportunity, and we’re looking forward to seeing what he can accomplish over the course of a full season,” Verlander said.
Mitchell will not be the only creator on the grid. His friend George Siciliano, who goes by Squirrel McNut online, is planning a full 2027 ARCA season as well, in a Rette Jones Racing car. Siciliano made three ARCA starts in 2026, with a top ten at Michigan and a ninth in the ARCA East race at Rockingham.
The Mentor Who Set the Plan
The road to this announcement started with Greg Biffle. Biffle’s friendship with Mitchell grew into a mentorship, and the NASCAR veteran guided Mitchell’s start in ARCA in 2025. When Mitchell said he wanted to race the Daytona 500, Biffle told him politely that it would not happen without serious work. The two built a plan instead. “Knowing we had to be in ARCA, and then likely Truck, and then maybe the O’Reilly Series, and then Cup,” Mitchell recalled. “You can’t just go race the Daytona 500.”
Then came December. Biffle was one of seven people killed in a plane crash in Statesville, North Carolina. The group had been planning to meet Mitchell in Florida.
“Greg Biffle, my mentor, passed away last month, so things are going to be a lot different,” Mitchell said in his January video. Time passed, and Mitchell worked through what his friend would have wanted. “He would want me to continue racing and trying to climb the ladder in NASCAR,” he said. Then he returned to the plan he and Biffle had built for the Daytona 500: “now I am prepared to complete that mission.”
He was back at the January ARCA test at Daytona, where the words “Be Life Biff” were plastered across the rear bumper of his car. Biffle had planned to join Mitchell in the ARCA race at Talladega later in the year, a detail Mitchell shared in the same video.
A Friend’s Phone Call and a Safe Seat
Biffle did more than coach. He and longtime racer turned spotter Kevin Hamlin connected Mitchell with Mark Rette, co-owner and crew chief at Rette Jones Racing, who had worked with Biffle at Roush Racing in the early 2000s. Mitchell is tall, and Biffle and Hamlin wanted to be sure an ARCA team could put him in a safe seat. Early on, some teams were not offering him the safest options to turn laps at Daytona.
Rette’s first contact with Mitchell was a mix-up. He was trying to work out who Cleetus McFarland was while taking a preliminary call from someone named Garrett Mitchell. It took him a while to understand the two were the same person. “All I knew was this is a friend of Hamlin and Alex Bowman,” Rette said with a laugh. After a test at Daytona, Rette said, “the rest is history.”
What stood out to Rette was how quickly Mitchell read the data. The first time they studied data together, it was throttle traces from Ilmor, and Mitchell knew what he was looking at immediately. The software matched what he used in his drag racing, a background that also includes flying helicopters and airplanes. Rette said Mitchell “can read data with the best of them,” a skill drag racing teaches.
Rette also saw a growing professionalism. At Daytona, Mitchell moved between his Niece Motorsports stall in the Truck garage and his Rette Jones stall in the ARCA garage. Rette chose not to remind him that driver headshots were set for 9 a.m., curious whether he would arrive unprompted. “He was right on time to every meeting. He hit every engagement,” Rette said. “He’s come a long way.”
Why RCR Said Yes
RCR was open about the pull of Mitchell’s audience. Austin Dillon said Mitchell brings a fan base that is massive and that RCR wanted him to come in, have fun and be himself. Ty Dillon led the idea alongside Verlander, and it came together fast.
Ty Dillon made the first call. “Hey, we were talking as a team and we like what you’re doing but it looks like you need some help in the driver department,” Mitchell remembered him saying. He laughed and said the point was valid. As of April, RCR was paying him, and the team had found funding with Tommy’s Express Car Wash. Mitchell said money as a driver was never his concern.
The numbers explain the interest. As of April, Mitchell had nearly 5 million followers on YouTube, and his ARCA and NASCAR livestreams drew close to a million viewers each time. RCR vice president Danny Lawrence said Richard Childress follows social media himself, on TikTok and Instagram, and knew of Mitchell from the attention his ARCA races drew. Lawrence said the team believed it could learn from him.
What turned interest into a deal was a visit to the RCR campus in Welcome, North Carolina. On a tour of the engine shop, Mitchell named an R07 and an SB2 on sight, then asked how much camber and caster the team runs. “He’s not just a YouTube personality. He’s actually a racer,” Lawrence said.
What the Season Has to Show
In April, Mitchell was realistic about the distance to the Daytona 500. “If I went out there tomorrow, I would probably lose the lead pack,” he said, explaining that he wanted to be within a reasonable skill gap of the main field before he tried the Daytona 500 at the Cup level.
His Truck debut at Daytona taught him the cost of small errors. He crashed out early. “I made a really small mistake that cost me,” he said, adding that he does not think he looked out of place in that field and that he believes more training and discipline can close the gap. A full ARCA year offers the repetition he needs, with 20 starts on every kind of track the ARCA calendar holds.
By April he had changed how he talked about the finish line. “I think my future in NASCAR, it looks a lot longer now,” he said, adding that he wanted to keep learning and stay part of RCR for a long time. He had relationships by then with RCR, Rette Jones Racing and Niece Motorsports, and he had bought a Pro Late Model from Rette Jones’ Port City Race Cars with the idea of improving his driving on big tracks.
On February 20, the No. 33 Chevrolet will roll out at Daytona with a driver who once said he never wanted to step foot in a NASCAR garage again. The mission he and Biffle mapped out, to climb the ladder to the Daytona 500 one step at a time, now has a schedule, a crew chief and 20 races to prove it.
