NASCAR chief admits Cleetus McFarland may not get approved for Talladega yet

Richard Childress Racing’s vice president of O’Reilly Series operations Danny Lawrence has admitted that he isn't sure NASCAR has seen enough to approve YouTuber Cleetus McFarland to run at Talladega later this month.

McFarland ran his O'Reilly Series debut for RCR at Rockingham on Saturday and, while he did finish the race, he did have to save near-spins a number of times before he spun properly in the final stage to bring out a caution – only just missing the inside wall.

Lawrence admitted that there were 'a lot of things' that NASCAR wanted to see before they approved McFarland for the legendary superspeedway, including a live pit stop, which they didn't get to see at The Rock.

McFarland seemed confident enough in a post-race interview, telling fans: "See you guys in two weeks at Talladega. That’s right!”[Note: that's not right, the Talladega race is in three weeks]

RCR chief: NASCAR might ask to see another race

Seemed less convinced that his driver would get the go-ahead for the high-speed drafting track at the end of the month, telling Motorsport.com: "Well, it's a big step. This is a hard race track and he did really good a couple of times where he could have spun the car out in front of everybody and didn't. I think if we were to go green tomorrow, he would be way better.

"He learned a lot in a short amount of time and I think it shows everyone what a big step this is going into the O'Reilly Series. I think he did a great job but we got to be better."

He continued: "Well, they'll look at everything. They might ask us to run another race because the thing about it is we didn't get to do a live pit stop. There were a lot of things they wanted to see happen that didn't happen.

"When he got sideways early, we automatically went into this conservation mode of just keep rolling and don't push it too hard. So, it's going to be close, but I would not be surprised if NASCAR didn't want us to run another race before we got to Daytona and Talladega. Everything happens so fast there that we all want to be prepared when we do take him there."