Brad Keselowski admits NASCAR concern after Cleetus McFarland deal

NASCAR veteran Brad Keselowski has called for the sport's driver approval process to be tightened up.

The 42-year-old made his NASCAR national series debut in the Truck Series back in 2004, and...well, it's fair to say that the landscape of the sport has changed somewhat since then.

So much, in fact, that a thing called 'YouTube' now exists, and people who are popular on there can find themselves driving in NASCAR races with precious little experience.

If you're out of the loop, that's a reference to Cleetus McFarland (real name Garrett Mitchell), an online star who has sparked a number of conversations about NASCAR's approval system for drivers.

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Keselowski: We abandoned series identity

McFarland had run just five races in the ARCA Menards Series, typically seen as the last testing ground before a move up to the NASCAR Truck Series, before he started the Truck race at Daytona last month. He wrecked out by himself after just a handful of laps.

Despite that, a part-time deal with Richard Childress Racing to run in the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series has materialized – and Keselowski presented his idea to put things back in some semblance of order on the Dale Jr Download this week.

“The problem that we have, this is NASCAR’s industry as a whole, is for whatever reason we completely abandoned the identity of those four series,” he said.

“Not necessarily the Cup Series, but those four series, kind of like the pecking order, have been thrown away. And it started with removing the Cup drivers from the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series.”

He continued: “Personally, I think that the 3 series should have three different approval criteria, with the Truck Series being approved. So, here’s my opinion.

"If you want to run ARCA and you know you have less than 100 starts in any major or even minor league form of racing. Yeah. Okay, cool. ARCA is your place. You, in my mind, should not be allowed to run the Truck Series unless you’re like, 'I have 100-plus starts across the country'."

Keselowski is not the only veteran driver to express his concerns about the current system, with Kyle Busch also speaking out pointedly last week on McFarland's lack of experience.