Drag Illustrated Issue 141, February 2019 | Page 62

THE TRIUMPH OF GARRETT MITCHELL ARRETT MITCHELL is almost everything we should want the sport of drag racing to look like. He loves going fast, he loves the NHRA and he knows the history of the sport so much he uses Don Garlits’ Museum of Drag Racing as an example of a life goal. Mitchell is also just 23 years old, loves Mountain Dew, embraces storytelling and has 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube. Mitchell and his persona, the wildly popular Cleetus McFarland, have made him one of the most popular figures in the sport today. From December through the end of January, more than a dozen videos Mitchell released reached a million-plus views, most of them hitting that number in just days. Some in that span have eclipsed two million, an- other is approaching three million views and one video – “The Jet Camino’s Roll Cage Is Incredible” – was one of YouTube’s – yes, the entire website – top trending videos, as it accumulated nearly 600,000 views in less than 24 hours. 62 | D r a g I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com BY JOSH HACHAT PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOSIAH RICHWINE & KEVIN COX Issue 141