NASCAR stars dare to stand in famed Marine footprints at Parris Island. ‘It’s intense’
As professional stock car race drivers, Ryan Blaney and Austin Cindric are used to flying around raceways at speeds up to 200 mph as they compete for points in the wildly popular NASCAR Cup Series, which includes “crown jewell” races like Florida’s Daytona 500 and Darlington, S.C.’s Southern 500, where both drivers will race later this month.
But on Thursday, the U.S. Marines at Parris Island literally stopped the hot shot drivers in their tracks -- make that yellow footprints, the same footprints occupied by 16,000 Marine recruits each year upon their arrival at the second-oldest Marine base in the country. It’s at this location where ornery drill sergeants loudly explain to green recruits how to stand at attention and what it means to be a Marine. And this is where Blaney and Cindric found themselves under verbal assault, too.
“Scream I sir!” Sgt. Sakiya Phillips, a drill instructor, growled at the sheepish pro drivers who failed to utter a peep after receiving a command.
“Do you understand!” the drill unstructed barked at another point. “All of you scream yes sir!”
“Yes sir!” said Blaney and Cindric, finally complying.
NASCAR and the Marines came together for a day to give the stars on the track a seat-in-the-pants understanding of what recruits go through in the trenches to become the nation’s front-line defense.
They also shot live rounds from pistols and rifles and rapelled down a 60-foot wall. From the poolside, they were told how recruits learn to survive in the water swimming in full uniform while wearing their boots. During a brief history, they learned about the buggy and muggy base located on an 8,000-acre coastal island that shrinks to 3,000 at high tide. Marines have trained here since 1915.
Josh Harris, Darlington Raceway’s president, who also participated in the training, said such visits to military bases highlight the committment of the raceway and NASCAR to the nation’s fighting men and women. At a meet and greet later, fans also got the chance to meet the drivers and see modern and historic race cars that were trucked onto the base.
“It gives us an appreciation for what these recruits are going through to become Marines,” Harris said.
While Blaney and Cindric were getting a taste of recruit life, some real recruits were undergoing the ultimate test before graduation known as the Crucible, a 54-hour marathon of near-constant physical motion and mental testing -- the “final gutcheck,” as Mark Henderson, deputy operations manager for Marine Corps Recruit Depot-Eastern Recruting Region, calls it.
Blaney and Cindric are drivers with the North Carolina-based pro racing organization called Team Peske. Blaney is currently ranked seventh in the NASCAR Cup Series standings, and Cindric 17th. Both will be competing in the Darlington 500 in Darlington on Aug. 28.
On Thursday morning, the drivers and Harris, the Darlington Raceway president, stood ramrod straight with their feet firmly planted in the bright yellow outline of footprints painted in the aspalt as Phillips, the drill instructor, gave them the business.
They knew a verbal assault was coming but still looked taken aback by its seriousness.
Then, just like recruits, they walked up the steps and through silver doors at the receiving building where they squeezed into small metal desks. This is the area where recruits are assigned to a platoon and make one final phone call to their families before undergoing 13 weeks of training.
“It’s intense,” Blaney said later of the yellow footprint experience, adding it also was “overwhelming.”
Phillips, the drill instructor, said the reaction is typical. “It’s a culture shock to them,” he said of recruits upon their arrival at Parris Island.
Seeing the Marines in movies and on TV is not the same as getting a first-hand look at the training, added Cindric, who won the 2022 Dayton 500.
“A really good experience -- an immersive experience,” Cindric said.
This story was originally published August 8, 2025 at 7:26 AM.
