Cleetus McFarland is going to get somebody killed...

Full disclosure, I cannot stand this guy. I think he's a terrible representative of the hobby. I don't watch his channel. Also he has a very punchable face. That said, occasionally I get tricked into watching him when he shows up on other channels I do watch. Such was the case when I watched the latest episode of Finnegan's Garage where he visited the cleetus & Cars event at Bristol motor speedway.

While watching the video I spotted a few things that made me think "how the hell was this even allowed to happen?"

Background for those who don't know, Cleetus is a law school dropout who makes his living as an automotive youtuber. He bought a short track in Bradenton FL and named it the Freedom Factory (big Jan 6th energy there) before making a hard right into covid denial. He then began hosting the Freedom 500. A spec crown vic invitational where a bunch of youtubers attempt to race. Cleetus provides the cars.

This past labor day they hosted an event at Bristol Motor Speedway. 100 laps, 30ish cars, a bunch of inexperienced drivers. The cars are literal death traps. here's some screen caps I grabbed.

The cars are not caged. they have roll hoops with curved door bars.

They have no rear down bars at all.

As near as I can tell they bought a basic 4 point NHRA roll hoop and installed it backwards, low mounting the down bars to use them as door bars. This was deemed good enough to put inexperienced racers wheel to wheel on a banked nascat track notorious for crashes...

One of the few experienced racers in the field immediately ran out and got some pool noodles just to have some kind of padding on the spartian 'cage"

The cars also had window nets. rivited directly to the door.

So you cannot drop them and cannot get out. This is only really a problem if you cannot open the drivers door.

Oh, would you look at that. Every one of those cars has the driver's door blocked. Every one of those drivers had to climb through the car to crawl out the passenger window. The #24 had to crawl through a spray of hot coolant coming from the 40 cars ruptured radiator.

But I suppose getting showered with hot coolant is sort of a Cleetus tradition.

I cannot understand how Bristol looked at these cars and thought, yeah... this is fine.

I'm not posting this just to E36 M3 on a guy I hate. My concern is that his gross negligence is going to get somebody killed, that story will make the news, and there will be a backlash on the legitimate amateur racing community.

I feel the same way when I watch HGTV and home improvement shows... ignoring safety guidelines on popular broadcasts is the norm, not the exception. 

A law school dropout who doesn't see the gross negligence it this will probably need a real good lawyer.

For the record. I totally agree with you on the safety points.  I admire 24 Hours of Lemons for their safety stance.  If it's not good enough for Lemons, I'm not getting behind the wheel.  

But then there's this:

YouTube: Blatant disregard for safety

Yeah, stay safe out there kids.

I get it, but also, these are adults and can make their own decisions. If they don't want to take the risks they don't have to. But also how fast are these old vics really going? Is this any more dangerous than driving on interstates at 80+ mph without a helmet surrounded by drivers with their noses buried in tik-tok videos?

edit: I changed my mind later after more discussion

In reply to maschinenbau :

Well, on the interstate the entire design of the road is intended to minimize accidents, there are speed limitations and a bunch of rules designed to avoid collisions. A racetrack is designed to contain carnage when an accident happens but the drivers are pushing the limits of what the car can do by design. So yeah, it's more dangerous.

As for adults making their own decisions, they may not be informed decisions and that's a fairly significant difference. Safety regs exist for a reason, and those reasons have real history behind them. Individuals always think "it'll never happen to me" but it always happens to somebody. The regulations are there specifically because humans are not good at making this kind of self-assessment.

If someone gets badly hurt or killed in a series with sub-par safety standards, we all will feel the repercussions.

maschinenbau said:

 Is this any more dangerous than driving on interstates at 80+ mph without a helmet surrounded by drivers with their noses buried in tik-tok videos?

Judging by the amount of accidents per vehicle mile, I would say "yes"

Judging by the amount of injuries per vehicle mile I would also say "yes"

Hopefully I will never have to judge by the amount of deaths per vehicle mile.

At least 2 autocross series by me were effectively shut down for months and one series had to find a different site to get going again, because a car's ABS glitched out causing it to smash into a parked car last year...and that's just property damage.

Tyler H said:

For the record. I totally agree with you on the safety points.  I admire 24 Hours of Lemons for their safety stance.  If it's not good enough for Lemons, I'm not getting behind the wheel.  

 

But then there's this:

YouTube: Blatant disregard for safety

 

Yeah, stay safe out there kids.

I would never in a million years get into one of those cars, but I was laughing my fool head off at almost that entire video. So much drama! So much destruction! That is good entertainment.

Where is the part of the cage that keeps it from parrallelograming into a flattened human?

That's some pretty atrocious stuff.  

The biggest thing I hate is that this makes this stuff seem "normal".  It makes tracks and series that want you to use the best safety possible to limit risk vs just choosing to accept it out to be the bad guys.  People see Cleetus running around with basically no safety having fun and not dying and see NASA/SCCA/LeMons as a oppressor who requires so much money to be spent just on safety.  People use dangerous tools all the time on Youtube without guards and eyewear, or do heavy hammer intensive metal work without earplugs and people WHO DON'T KNOW BETTER BECAUSE THEY HAVEN'T BEEN TAUGHT see it and think that's the "right way".   Then when they see someone wearing all the gear and doing things safetly they make a Top Gear Health and Safety joke about the nerd who is being a pansy, instead of seeing it as a person who understands the risks of what they are doing and is merely trying to ensure that they will be able to do them even if something goes wrong.   Think about the number of people who will be introduced to what a amateur W2W racecar is by watching Cleetus, or the number of people who learned how to use an Angle Grinder from American Chopper.  It's vitally important that people continue to trumpet the right way to do things because you never know who is going to treat what you do as Mentorship.

GameboyRMH said:

because a car's ABS glitched out causing it to smash into a parked car last year...

As the resident ABS engineer, I'd like to see the data from that "ABS glitch".

Tyler H said:

For the record. I totally agree with you on the safety points.  I admire 24 Hours of Lemons for their safety stance.  If it's not good enough for Lemons, I'm not getting behind the wheel.  

 

But then there's this:

YouTube: Blatant disregard for safety

 

Yeah, stay safe out there kids.

Jesus berkeley.

Not one cage.  No one staying in the cars till safety gets there.  Active airbags with nothing else. Just nothing safe

What the berkeley 

maschinenbau said:

I get it, but also, these are adults and can make their own decisions.

At a local-ish Rallycross event (non-SCCA), I had the safety steward tell me the same thing when I suggested they not put the workerstations on the outside of a the corners.  Thankfully I moved (and did my best to clear a new spot in the tall grass/shrubs), but had I remained where they station was supposed to be I would've been flattened by the second car on course that day.

Keith Tanner said:

As for adults making their own decisions, they may not be informed decisions and that's a fairly significant difference.

^This.  Many of the people who are trying out a motorsport for the first time or the 100th time are not experts on safety.  This is why standardized safety regs are created. 

AClockworkGarage said:

I think he's a terrible representative of the hobby. I don't watch his channel. Also he has a very punchable face. 

thats him alright.
Also, is that his real name or just another bit of cringe he came up with? 

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

GameboyRMH said:

because a car's ABS glitched out causing it to smash into a parked car last year...

As the resident ABS engineer, I'd like to see the data from that "ABS glitch".

Driver said it seemed to go into "ice mode," IIRC it was a Ford Focus?

nocones said:

Where is the part of the cage that keeps it from parrallelograming into a flattened human?

That's some pretty atrocious stuff.  

The biggest thing I hate is that this makes this stuff seem "normal".  It makes tracks and series that want you to use the best safety possible to limit risk vs just choosing to accept it out to be the bad guys.  People see Cleetus running around with basically no safety having fun and not dying and see NASA/SCCA/LeMons as a oppressor who requires so much money to be spent just on safety.  People use dangerous tools all the time on Youtube without guards and eyewear, or do heavy hammer intensive metal work without earplugs and people WHO DON'T KNOW BETTER BECAUSE THEY HAVEN'T BEEN TAUGHT see it and think that's the "right way".   Then when they see someone wearing all the gear and doing things safetly they make a Top Gear Health and Safety joke about the nerd who is being a pansy, instead of seeing it as a person who understands the risks of what they are doing and is merely trying to ensure that they will be able to do them even if something goes wrong.   Think about the number of people who will be introduced to what a amateur W2W racecar is by watching Cleetus, or the number of people who learned how to use an Angle Grinder from American Chopper.  It's vitally important that people continue to trumpet the right way to do things because you never know who is going to treat what you do as Mentorship.

HEAR HEAR!

AClockworkGarage said:

Background for those who don't know, Cleetus is a law school dropout who makes his living as an automotive youtuber. He bought a short track in Bradenton FL and named it the Freedom Factory (big Jan 6th energy there) before making a hard right into covid denial. 

I'm really upset that overt patriotism is associated with COVID denial and insurrectionism nowadays. I'm guilty of it too. Is flying a giant American flag suction cupped to your German FWD hot hatch corny? Yes. Should I immediately go to "wow he must not believe in COVID and/or hates Biden"? No, no I shouldn't. 

Anyways that was a E36 M3show because one of my favorite automotive photographers, Larry Chen, was in the Freedom 500 and was involved in a crash. He's actually in the Type S #000 shown there. I had no clue he was in that much danger. 

I really want to chalk this up to "Cleetus didn't know any better" or "someone else prepped the cars and Cleetus is just the media presence" but neither of those really excuse it. 

Unfortunately some things are written in blood, with racing safe regs being one of those things.  Seems like a fun way to get hurt real bad.

I don't think Larry Chen knows much about cars.  That's actually a great example of how the idea of 'they're adults so they know what risks are being undertaken' isn't really very accurate.  Expecting random Internet celebs to know about roll cage safety and good safety practices enough to judge all this accurately seems like a real stretch.

A dude who decided to call himself "Cletus" going hard into C-19 denial?  Color me shocked.

In reply to TJL (Forum Supporter) :

The latter unfortunately. 

TJL (Forum Supporter) said:

AClockworkGarage said:

I think he's a terrible representative of the hobby. I don't watch his channel. Also he has a very punchable face. 

thats him alright.
Also, is that his real name or just another bit of cringe he came up with? 

Character name. Real name is Garrett. He started working for Kyle at 1320 Video.

The hit that scared me was the car on the outside fighting for the lead (I think a famous Female Utuber was driving).  She hit the wall a ton.  It was a Dale Earnhardt Sr type hit.  That was a seriously bad moment that scared me a bit.  Her seat in the car was bent!!!!  The same angle of impact and everything.  I saw a vid on her channel last night about it and while she was playing it cool for the cameras you could tell she was really hurting.  She should have gone and been checked out by medical people.  Hell if she has not done so already she should still go.  

If they do that again they are going to have to rethink things in a big way.

Link to her Vid on it.

hunter47 said:

AClockworkGarage said:

Background for those who don't know, Cleetus is a law school dropout who makes his living as an automotive youtuber. He bought a short track in Bradenton FL and named it the Freedom Factory (big Jan 6th energy there) before making a hard right into covid denial. 

I'm really upset that overt patriotism is associated with COVID denial and insurrectionism nowadays. I'm guilty of it too. Is flying a giant American flag suction cupped to your German FWD hot hatch corny? Yes. Should I immediately go to "wow he must not believe in COVID and/or hates Biden"? No, no I shouldn't. 

If you actually watch his channel, it's refreshingly apolitical unlike how this thread started. 

I change my mind though about the safety aspect, and agree he knows better and should put more effort into safety. It's a bit irresponsible to the rest of the motorsports community, even though yeah it's a free country and they can do whatever they want.

Tyler H said:

For the record. I totally agree with you on the safety points.  I admire 24 Hours of Lemons for their safety stance.  If it's not good enough for Lemons, I'm not getting behind the wheel.  

 

But then there's this:

YouTube: Blatant disregard for safety

 

Yeah, stay safe out there kids.

That vid made my spine hurt. I also enjoy ~2:20 the medics show up, but when the dude pumped on adreniline from rolling his car a couple times jumps out, they are just "eh, hes fine" and drives away. 

I'm still reeling, and even more so now, at the "roll bar installed backwards" bit, now that I know there was an actual injury. This is a catastrophe. It gives all racing, especially crapcan and cheap style races, a bad name.