Who is Bradenton racetrack buyer Cleetus McFarland? For starters, that’s not his real name

The storied DeSoto Speedway racetrack in Manatee County is about to get a new life thanks to an ambitious YouTube personality and his friends.

Garrett Mitchell, the Florida resident and online content creator behind car nut Cleetus McFarland, recently announced his purchase of the DeSoto Speedway property with big plans for a new racing wonderland.

Mitchell’s primary YouTube channel has 1.77 million followers, and the takeover of the abandoned speedway near Bradenton is adding more fuel to the fire.

Who is Cleetus McFarland?

Cleetus McFarland is the alter-ego of 24-year-old Garrett Mitchell.

Originally from Omaha, Neb., Mitchell was studying law in Tampa and running social media for a street car focused company called 1320 Video when Cleetus the car fanatic came to be.

Like an (almost) real life Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell’s NASCAR-driving caricature in “Talladega Nights”) McFarland is all about fast cars, winning races and the U.S.A.

How did it start?

“Becoming Cleetus McFarland was a total accident,” Mitchell told Street Race Magazine in 2017.

The character was thought up on the spur of the moment while Mitchell was on the job for 1320 Video at a 2015 racing event in Colorado.

After ripping the sleeves off of a Chevrolet t-shirt purchased at Walmart, Mitchell laid on a Southern drawl and gushed over a 3000-horsepower Camaro as 1320 CEO Kyle Loftis filmed.

Loftis posted the video that night, Mitchell said, and by the next morning it had nearly 1 million views.

The persona of Cleetus grew from there, leading Mitchell to eventually start his own YouTube channel with several friends.

Through the channel, Mitchell has managed a parody of racing culture while also showing genuine appreciation for modified cars, automotive tech, drag racing and burnouts (that’s when you smoke the wheels of a muscle car to oblivion for no good reason).

Mitchell’s McFarland persona is known for his next-level patriotism; he frequently waxes poetic on bald eagles and being “made in America” — or, as he puts it, ‘Murica.

Mitchell has built a brand off of the character through YouTube videos and t-shirts and merchandise featuring Cleetus catchphrases like “Hell yeah, brother” and “Do it for Dale” (referencing, of course, NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt).

Hijinks on the YouTube channel have included dropping off a Dale Earnhardt-style NASCAR with the valet at Cheesecake Factory and creating a souped-up golf cart.

Mitchell seemed to catch a local news station a bit off guard recently when he gave an interview about the Speedway purchase in character — mullet and sleeveless shirt included. It is unclear if the news station was aware that McFarland is made-up, as they never referred to Mitchell by his real name.

Mitchell stuck to his part for the first half of the segment.

In character as McFarland, he name-dropped his “cousin” Gary Winthorpe, another fictitious YouTube persona (a.k.a. Danny Duncan), who played a similar prank on the same anchor in a 2017 news segment.

Mitchell’s enthusiasm for the new project was present, though.

“This is a historic American racing legacy right here,” Mitchell told ABC7 WWSB. “We want to see racing coursing through its veins again.”

Humor aside, Mitchell’s channel offers plenty of workshopping, part-swapping, racetrack footage and automotive talk for genuine car nerds.

Prize cars featured on the YouTube channel have included Leroy, a record-setting Corvette-powered stick-shift go-kart, and Toast, a muscle car built for burnouts that was recently transported all the way to Australia for competition.

Mitchell recently added a second YouTube channel that already has 220,000 subscribers.

While Mitchell may have been headed for a more traditional career a few years ago, creating online content seems to be paying the bills for now.

The refurbished track in Bradenton will fittingly be dubbed “Freedom Factory.”

What’s next?

There’s a considerable amount of work to be done at the overgrown and potholed DeSoto Speedway before it’s ready for action.

However, Mitchell is planning to have it race-ready by the end of this year, according to recent social media posts.

A “Cleetus and Cars” event is scheduled for Nov. 20 and 21 at the Freedom Factory.

Fans seem happy that Mitchell is putting his YouTube earnings back into the world of car racing and the channel that made him famous.

The world will likely be along for the ride via the video network.

In a new video posted on Sunday, Mitchell gave viewers an in-depth tour of the track and the work required to fix it. Within a few hours, it had almost 500,000 views.

This story was originally published February 3, 2020 at 6:22 AM with the headline "Who is Bradenton racetrack buyer Cleetus McFarland? For starters, that’s not his real name."