Cleetus McFarland Net Worth: How a Florida YouTuber Built a $10 Million Motorsports Empire

Last updated on May 21, 2026

Lawrence Garrett Mitchell is in the middle of a certain type of American success story that only seems to be possible in the YouTube era. He is better known as Cleetus McFarland, the goateed, ball-cap-wearing Floridian who makes a living by burning tires and manages to turn that into a fortune that most working professionals will never see. Although some smaller outlets contend the true amount is closer to $2 million, industry estimates place his net worth at about $10 million. As is typically the case with private fortunes based on automobiles, real estate, and advertising revenue, the reality is most likely somewhere in the middle and is most likely rising.

It’s worth taking a moment to consider how this even occurred. Mitchell was born in Omaha in 1995, launched a YouTube channel as a teenager in 2009, and worked as the social media manager for the drag racing channel 1320Video during his early career. He took on the persona of Cleetus McFarland, a character he had been experimenting with at Rocky Mountain Drag Week, sometime around 2015, and it just took off. He had a kind of in-joke intimacy with his audience that polished influencers can never quite replicate thanks to the name itself, which was exaggerated Southern and half affection and half mockery.

His willingness to truly build, break, and rebuild seems to set him apart from the larger group of automotive YouTubers. His most well-known vehicle is Leroy, a body-less Chevrolet Corvette C5 that resembles a science experiment rather than a sports car because it is only covered in an exo-cage. He won awards, broke personal records, and made one strange car a recurring character in his videos with Leroy. Watching the channel over the years has given me the impression that the cars have personalities of their own and that viewers pay attention to them just as much as the driver.

That loyalty is reflected in the earnings. His yearly income, which comes from an audience of about 3.8 million YouTube subscribers, is estimated to be between $4.7 million and $5.9 million across all revenue streams, though the most recent counts put that number well above 4.6 million. Pay-per-view broadcasts, ticketed events, merchandise, sponsorships, and the steady but slow revenue from a back catalog of viral videos all play a part. It’s the type of business that appears disorganized on the outside but is actually quite diverse.

The intriguing part of the story begins with the real estate. McFarland paid $2.2 million to purchase the former DeSoto Speedway in Bradenton, Florida, at the beginning of 2020. The grandstands were silently decaying in the humidity of the Gulf, and weeds had been growing through the asphalt for years. Before reopening it to the public in February 2021, he renamed it the Freedom Factory and renovated it for a year. The now-famous Freedom 500, drift events, burnout competitions, and the oddly named LeMullets endurance race are all held there. It seems like it shouldn’t work to watch grown men in cheap wigs cram themselves into dilapidated sedans for a televised race, but thousands of spectators turn out.

He discovered something even more significant two years later. He closed on a 50-acre private airport in Myakka City, roughly fifteen minutes east of the track, for $3.5 million in November of last year. There is grass on the runway. One elderly owner claimed that thousands of WWII pilots had trained on a Piper J-3 Cub, one of the vintage aircraft kept in the hangars. McFarland informed the audience that he intends to construct his home there in addition to a specially designed race car hangar. In the video tour, which has already received well over a million views, he stated, “I had to spend nearly every dollar I have to make this purchase happen.” It’s unclear if that was a literal accounting of his bank balance or just salesmanship.

In contrast, his racing career has gradually transitioned from novelty to credibility. He participated in the Stadium Super Trucks series in 2022, finished ninth in the championship, and eventually made it to the podium in Bristol. Early in 2025, he was driving a Ford for Rette Jones Racing and making his ARCA Menards debut at Daytona under his real name, Garrett Mitchell. He currently works part-time for Richard Childress Racing in NASCAR’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. The majority of YouTubers don’t follow that route. Most were never able to.

The amount of value contained in non-liquid assets is what makes the entire situation difficult to quantify financially. The cars, the track, the airport, and the brand itself are all difficult to translate into a clear monetary value. In a few years, the $10 million estimate from websites like Celebrity Net Worth might prove to be conservative, particularly if his motorsports career continues to rise. It’s difficult to ignore the fact that a young man who began filming drag races in 2009 now owns an airport and a racetrack and is actually operating stock cars at Talladega. The sum of the parts is greater than what the headline figure indicates.

i) https://www.aol.com/youtuber-cleetus-mcfarland-just-bought-114041453.html
ii) https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-athletes/race-car-drivers/cleetus-mcfarland-net-worth/
iii) https://us.youtubers.me/cleetus-mcfarland/youtube-estimated-earnings
iv) https://blackfacts.com/fact/cleetus-mcfarland-net-worth-revealed-fortune-insights-black-news-channel