Dale Earnhardt Jr. gives career advice to YouTuber and NASCAR hopeful Cleetus McFarland

It all started when McFarland struck up a friendship with the late Greg Biffle while doing charity work in the hurricane battered North Carolina high country region. McFarland, who races a variety of cars and owns a short track in Bradenton, Florida, told the former Cup Series contender he wanted to “work my way to the Daytona 500.”

Biffle was supportive, but also tried to get McFarland to treat his eventual progress with a little more diligence. Those figurative guardrails disappeared when Biffle died in an aviation accident last December.

Racing in Biffle’s wake, McFarland wanted to move his way up to Daytona very quickly, but he soon found that was more difficult than even his respectful view of the industry had led him to believe.

But when Richard Childress Racing came calling with a proposal over the spring, that included a process-based pathway towards the highest levels, including starts in the NASCAR O’Reilly Series, McFarland again started to dream of Daytona.

It’s been a difficult proposition. He’s had some success in ARCA, both superspeedways and short tracks, but his starts in the Truck and O’Reilly divisions have been an education. "A couple of spins between Rockingham and Nashville, an RCR car is a real handful to drive in the races." McFarland said.

Earnhardt continues to support McFarland, but offered some advice on Tuesday on his Dale Jr. Download podcast Ask Dale segment.

“Well, there was a lot of mistakes, you know,” Earnhardt said. ‘Listen, all you guys that get into racing, you’re going to bust your ass under somebody. (Nashville) particularly. … He's out running laps and I don't think he ruined anybody's day... I thought he did all right.”

“My whole feeling about his deal is if he can get himself two full seasons or a couple years, in ARCA, running all of the ARCA races, all of them. Short tracks all around. I think if he could go do that, man, he'd be way better off trying to tackle this O'Reilly stuff.

“So I don’t mind him running the one-off O’Reilly race every now and then, but I just think he’s going to be frustrated, because the results won’t, you know, the race started, he passed a couple cars. But it's like Joey Gase and those guys, and he's in a way better car than them. He caught a couple people and that’s great, he was excited about that. But eventually he’s going to go, ‘Okay man. "I know this is my car and I need to be coming up here. And when he gets that, he's going to get frustrated,”

With his starts in ARCA, on all Truck Series tracks and short tracks in the second-tier division, NASCAR officials have asked him to perform to a level where they feel comfortable giving him approval to run larger tracks in the NOAPS car.

McFarland also bought a straight rail Super/Pro Late Model that he plans to race all over the country. “Earnhardt feels that coupled with a full season in ARCA, it will really go a long way toward improving his overall race craft before he gets to race in the Great American Race.

“If he’s in it to have fun, run good and still learn at the same rate, you can go do that in the ARCA series,” Earnhardt said. “He’s got a Pro Late Model that he built himself. Go run that one. I mean, he has a race track. I’d be out at that race track running laps. … "Like, right now, on a Tuesday he could be just running sets of tires at his track in his Pro.

That is very much his plan too. McFarland will be back in action this weekend racing for Niece Motorsports in the Truck Series and Rette Jones Motorsports in the ARCA Series at Michigan International Speedway.