Key Takeaways
- Thursday, May 14, NASCAR Cup driver Daniel Suárez and his crew chief Ryan Sparks spent the day at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina — wrapping Charlotte Motor Speedway's Mission 600 program in the lead-up to the Coca-Cola 600 next Sunday.
- The visit covered an F-15E Strike Eagle hangar tour, F-35 and F-22 simulators with VR headsets, a 9-G physiotherapy briefing, a demonstration of an EOD bomb-disposal robot, and an autograph session with NASCAR-fan Airmen.
- Suárez became a U.S. citizen in 2024, thirteen years after coming to the country from Monterrey, Mexico in 2011. He told the Airmen the story directly: "I'm extremely proud to be a U.S. citizen."
- The visit lands one week before the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway (Sunday May 24, 6 p.m. ET, Prime Video and HBO Max). Memorial Day weekend's longest race is the destination Mission 600 is built around.
- Suárez and Sparks are off to a strong start in their first season together — 14th in the Cup Series standings through 12 races — and head into Sunday's non-points-paying All-Star Race at Dover (1 p.m. ET, FS1).
Let me tell you something, folks.
Memorial Day weekend in racing has a shape to it. The Coca-Cola 600 anchors it — six hundred miles at Charlotte Motor Speedway, the longest race of the year, the 6 p.m. green flag that runs into the night. Around the 600, the sport builds a tribute weekend: the patriotic paint schemes, the flyovers, the Mission 600 visits that put drivers in front of the active-duty men and women they're racing in tribute to.
Thursday's chapter of Mission 600 was Daniel Suárez and his crew chief Ryan Sparks, and the chapter ran at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
The day started in the hangar with the McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle — a nearly 64-foot fighter aircraft that can run up to Mach 2.5, north of 1,800 miles per hour. Their guide was Kyle "Moonshine" Williams, a die-hard NASCAR fan who had recently returned to North Carolina from overseas deployment. Williams walked the No. 7 Spire driver and crew chief through every inch of the airframe, then later came back with a racing-themed helmet and a poster for Suárez to sign.
Sparks — the man who runs the No. 7 Chevrolet on Sunday — got to meet the crew chiefs who set up and analyze the F-15 the same way he does the race car. The Cup car has a setup sheet and a wind-tunnel notebook. The F-15 has a maintenance log and a flight envelope. Same job. Different velocity.
When the two finally climbed aboard, Suárez took the front seat. Sparks went in the back.
"I love working on cars, all cars especially, so I feel like it's, in a way, the same thing just way more complicated," Suárez told NASCAR.com. "To be able to see a lot of the mechanics, the interior, the cockpit and everything to learn more about how they repair it, how they operate it and what kind of usage they give to this kind of aircraft."
From the hangar, the duo moved to the F-15 4th Training Squadron and into the simulators. F-35 and F-22 cockpits. VR headsets. 360-degree real-life videos that play back the view from a plane in flight — not a video game, the real footage. Then both got their hands on the joysticks. Takeoff. Landing. The simulated kind.
Lunch was at the Southern Eagle Dining Facility, where Airmen gave them the physiotherapy brief: an F-15 at full speed can pull up to nine Gs of force. Nine times the force of gravity. The pilot's body has to be trained to hold that load without losing consciousness, without losing motor control, without losing the kind of decision-making fidelity required to keep a $30 million aircraft in formation at supersonic speed.
The cars share helmets and G-forces and the long-distance focus discipline with the aircraft. The fighter pilots do all of it at a multiple of the load and at well over twice the speed.
After lunch, a member of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit brought out the EOD's remote-controlled robot — designed with controls modeled after video game controllers, used in the field to disarm bombs and improvised explosive devices. The article that wrote up the day put it simply:
Both Suárez and Sparks flawlessly extricated a fake grenade from the dining room floor.
The day finished in a lounge area where Airmen — many of them NASCAR fans, the article notes — came up for autographs and photos. And it was here, in that final hour, that Suárez told them his story.
He's from Monterrey, Mexico. He came to the United States in 2011. He became a U.S. citizen in 2024.
"These guys, they're extremely good in what they do," Suárez told NASCAR.com. "I had an opportunity to fly with the Thunderbirds a handful of years back, and that day, I gained a ton of respect for what these guys do because it's not easy. The Gs, the forces, the way that these guys have to train to be able to do these kinds of things, normal — it's not normal, but they make it look so normal."
And then this:
"I'm extremely proud to be a U.S. citizen. It's spectacular, honestly. What they do, the amount of people, the amount of building, the amount of training, the amount of equipment that they all have is amazing. To be able to live in this country and support in a small way all these men and women that are serving our country is the least that we can do."
Sparks, who is in his first year as Suárez's crew chief, summed up his side of the day for NASCAR.com:
"He's had a long journey himself of how he got to where he is now, and just to see how he comes and relates to the people here, and working with him, and how he communicated with — he just does such a good job. I love just the way he treats people and how he relates to all these military members. He's a character. It's been a lot of fun along the way, but the more I learn about him, the more I like him as well."
That's the human anchor of Mission 600. Drivers go to military bases all over the country. They tour aircraft. They climb in simulators. They sign autographs. But the version that lands at every base is the same — that a sport built on speed and precision sits in a country defended by people who do the same work at a higher altitude and a higher cost.
Suárez and Sparks come out of the visit and back into the season. They're 14th in the Cup standings through 12 races in their first year together. (Sunday's All-Star Race at Dover Motor Speedway is non-points — a million dollars on the line, a trophy at the end, no playoff math attached.) Then the team trucks down to Charlotte.
Next Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern, the 600 runs at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Six hundred miles. Four hours of green-flag work. Memorial Day weekend in the loudest place in racing. Mission 600's whole story leads to that green flag — every driver visit, every base tour, every Airman handshake.
That's what Memorial Day weekend in racing is for.
I'll see you at the 600.