The pressure of an elimination race in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs? That’s nothing compared to the nerves three of this year’s playoff drivers felt when making marriage proposals to their longtime partners.
“Way more nervous for that than Daytona,” Harrison Burton said during a recent playoff-driver media session, referring to August’s race-deciding restart that launched him into the playoffs as an upset winner. “At Daytona, I had a plan and I executed the plan. When I proposed to Jenna (Petty, his fiancée), I didn’t really speak very well. My hands were shaking.”
Ah, NASCAR drivers; they’re just like us.
Burton’s answer sparked us to ask two other recently engaged drivers for their stories of that moment. Before heading to Saturday night’s Round 1 cutoff race at Bristol Motor Speedway — in which four of the 16 drivers will be eliminated from championship contention — Burton, Daniel Suárez and Ryan Blaney shared their tales of marriage proposal nerves that make racing for their playoff lives feel like a casual Sunday drive by comparison.
Suárez had the most harrowing tale, so let’s start with him. Now-wife Julia Piquet, the daughter of three-time Formula One world champion Nelson Piquet, grew up in Monaco — so Suárez had the idea to make a sentimental proposal outside of her childhood home while vacationing in Europe. Piquet had been so excited to show Suárez the house, and her brother Nelson Piquet Jr. put Suárez in touch with a photographer from the family’s native Brazil.
But when Suárez and Piquet hiked up to the house early in the morning, where the photographer was supposed to be hiding, there was a significant problem: Despite planning for weeks, the man was nowhere to be found, and he wasn’t answering the phone either.
Panic began to set in.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Suárez said. “I was thinking, ‘Do I just give her the ring and nobody has any pictures? Or should I just wait and reset and start from zero again?’ I had to think about that in like a minute.”
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As it turned out, the photographer had flown from Brazil to Monaco the night before — and overslept. Suárez’s plan was trashed (“I was so mad, I wanted to kick the guy’s butt,” he said), but his racing instincts kicked in, and he needed to quickly improvise a backup plan.
While Suárez stalled and tried to figure out another location, the photographer finally got in touch — almost crying, as Suárez recalled — and was determined to make good on his assignment.
“I told him, ‘This is what you’re going to do: You’re going to get your butt here to the hotel where we’re staying and you’re going to follow us,’” Suárez said. “I’m going to go to the beach and wherever I find a cool place, I’m going to give you the mark. You get in the spot, and then I’m going to do it right there.”
But it took some sneakiness worthy of a spy movie to make it happen. The photographer was off in the distance (“Just far away enough to see there was a person, but you can’t recognize the person,” Suárez said) and tried to follow Suárez’s cues along their beach stroll — all while Piquet had no idea what was happening.
“When we were walking, I was seeing a cool spot and was telling the guy, ‘Here, here’ and then I was like, ‘No, never mind, go away,’” Suárez said. “It was kind of behind Julia, so she never noticed it.”
As it turned out, Suárez picked a location on the fly that happened to be where Piquet went to the beach with her friends as a youth, so there was still some sentimental value. And it was more scenic than proposing in front of a house anyway.
“It turned out to be amazing because the story is kind of cool,” he said, “even if in the moment it wasn’t cool.”
The two were married in Brazil during NASCAR’s Olympic break in July.
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Meanwhile, Blaney had already decided to propose on a December trip to a mountain resort in central Washington before he won the NASCAR Cup Series championship last fall. After dating model Gianna Tulio for several years, Blaney was boarding the plane to Washington when he realized he had yet to call her father and ask for permission.
“I called him up, and I’m like, ‘Hey, Mr. Tulio, I’m about to get on this plane and I just had a question I was wanting to ask you before I asked Gianna here in a handful of days to marry me,’” Blaney recalled. “‘I just wanted to make sure it was OK with you.’”
But Tulio’s father responded with a comment that threw Blaney for a loop.
“Well, you know, Ryan, let me think about it for a couple days,” he said.
“I was like, ‘Well, OK,’ and he goes, ‘I’m messing with you,’” Blaney said, laughing.
Naturally, having a model for a future spouse means a good engagement photographer is a must, and Blaney coordinated that part with a friend’s wife so she could do the bulk of the communication while helping him avoid suspicion. But there were still plenty of nerves.
“It’s just an awkward thing,” Blaney said. “You’re on your knee and you’re looking up at your girlfriend, presenting her with this prize. … You’re not nervous because you think they’re going to say, ‘No,’ you’re just nervous at how you’re going to sound. And this question that you’re asking them, it’s just a very odd moment.”
Then there was the concept of keeping the ring hidden for what Blaney said was “four or five months.” Flying to the West Coast, he needed to figure out how to keep the ring on him without Tulio finding it.
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That was relatable to Burton, whose March 27 proposal in New York City was “scary” in part because he fretted over how to maintain the secrecy of carrying a ring through airport security.
What happened if TSA opened his bag, he wondered? Or what if he dropped the ring while trying to hide it?
“I’m going through a freaking Uber with a ring tucked in my hoodie, like, ‘Oh my God,’” he said. “There was a lot of stuff that could go wrong there.”
New York is Petty’s “favorite place in the world,” Burton said, so he had planned the March proposal for months. But New York brings some odd elements, like what Burton described as “two people fighting with fake swords” in the background behind Petty when he got down on one knee near a stone bridge in Central Park.
Fortunately, the photographer Burton hired was able to pick an angle that didn’t show any oddities. And he caught another lucky break, too: The weather held off just long enough for the proposal and pictures.
“Five minutes after I asked her, it started raining,” he said. “So it was close.”
Blaney and Tulio are planning for a December wedding in Aspen; Burton and Petty are targeting October 2025.
— Jordan Bianchi contributed to this post
(Top photo of Ryan Blaney and Gianna Tulio during NASCAR’s Champion’s Week in November, weeks before he proposed: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
