Florida is the home of gators, oranges, and people high on bath salts trying to eat each other's faces. As American a good time as that may be, it's just not American enough for some. Fortunately, good old Cleetus McFarland has our backs! Today he and 40 of the nation's best online automotive celebrities and YouTubers gathered at Cleetus's Freedom Factory (former DeSoto Speedway) for The 2.4 Hours of LeMullets, where they raced 20 Ford Crown Victorias equipped with nitrous and some grippy Nitto Nt555 G2 tires. The race was announced by "Americas Crew Chief" himself, Larry McReynolds.
Ladies And Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!
As you can almost see in the picture above, the race is absolutely PACKED with celebrity drivers including pro drifter Vaughn Gittin Jr., NASCAR Cup Series Racer Alex Bowman, automotive YouTubers Adam LZ, Taylor Ray, the SXSblog.com guys, and even the all-girl team of Emilia Hartford and Alex Taylor. The qualifying round left the top five being Taylor Ray first in the 78 car, Ronnie Renner in the 007, Jamie from PFI Speed third, followed by Alex Bowman in the 48 and Doug from Motion Raceworks.
Rubbin' Is Racin'
At stake in this adrenaline-fueled race between friends is bragging rights, their choice of two El Caminos or one Camaro, and $5,000. Unless of course, their name is Cleetus. With those kind of spoils on the line, there were bound to be some serious crashes. Within the first 5 minutes, we saw number 28 driven by Emilia, crash into the left front wheel of Donut Operator number 50, bringing the race into a caution.
Ostentatiously over-qualified Alex Bowman quickly took the lead after the second caution, followed by an intense battle for third between Vaughn Gittin Jr. and Doug from SXSBlog, who exchanged pit maneuvers to the point of eventually taking each other out. Cautions occurred frequently, including one occurring a minute left before the drivers' change in which Doug in the number 4 car spun out hard into the wall. After the change, the new drivers started out with Cleetus first, Kevin Smith second, and Blake Wilkey in third.
With only 1 of the 7 backup cars remaining at the start of the second half, the new batch of drivers were willing to risk it all. They didn't even wait for the pace van to leave the track before crashing into each other. Throughout the night we even saw Cleetus McFarland himself nudging and trying to pit maneuver the pace van!
A Legendary Photo Finish
During the caution-filled 2nd half, the pace van had to be refueled because it had seen so much time on track. Meanwhile, the fleet of beat up Crown Vics charged forward into a nail biting fight for glory. In the final minutes, we had Cleetus fighting to gain back positions after being spun out by Chelsea Denofa. Second place Kevin Smith spun out in the infield, leaving Brent from PFI Speed and Blake Wilkey to duke it out for the title.
After the white flag, Blake chased down down Brent through a field of lapped cars and finished with Blake pitting Brent and spinning him right at the finish line for a true photo finish!
After much deliberation, the results were in with Brent still crossing first, meaning he and Jamie got to take home two mullet-growing El Caminos and five grand for beating Cleetus. Top five standings at the end were: Brent/Jamie, Blake/Ronnie, Nick/JH Diesel, Cleetus/Alex, and Vaughn/Chelsea.
For more information, just ask you favorite online auto celeb for their personal account.
Source: cleetusmcfarland.com