FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- The ominous green barrel alone is more than two feet long, the business end of a powerful sniper rifle that literally shakes the ground when fired. The Barrett .50-caliber M107 is responsible for some of the longest military shots ever recorded, capable of killing a man from an astounding 1.5 miles away. Each squeeze of the trigger is followed by another breath-sucking whoomp and a concussion you can feel in your chest. The magazine ejects shell casings as fat around as a highlighter pen.

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Soldiers seemed to respect and appreciate the fact that Ryan Newman knows his way around weapons and is almost immediately comfortable with the tools of their lethal trade.

• Newman visits Fort Bragg

Lying on his stomach behind a sandbag on Range 37, Ryan Newman is firing away like a trigger-happy character in a video game, blowing holes in a rusty old car -- it ought to have a No. 12 painted on it, someone jokes -- 300 yards away. When he finally stands up, a wide, kid-at-Christmas smile is cemented on his face. Oh yes, the relationship between the Stewart-Haas driver and his new primary sponsor, U.S. Army, is off to a fantastic start. Nothing touches an outdoorsman's heart like cold gunmetal.

At first it did seem a rather incongruous combination, Newman and the Army, the vehicle structural engineer representing soldiers molded from blood and guts. Aric Almirola, one of the previous drivers of the Army car when the branch backed a vehicle at Dale Earnhardt Inc., looked just like the kind of kid the service was trying to recruit. Mark Martin, who shared that ride last season, looked just like the kind of guy who might have scaled a cliff at Normandy. Newman looked like ... well, wry, relatively quiet Newman. Yet he appears miscast only until you put a rifle in his hands, and it becomes quite obvious that this is one Private Ryan no one would have to save.

Really, of all the drivers to wear Army colors since the military branch stepped up to NASCAR's highest level -- Jerry Nadeau, Mike Wallace, Joe Nemechek, Mike Skinner and Martin among them -- Newman, despite any initial misgivings, might just be best suited to wear fatigues and a beret. He sure shoots like it. Six kills during a session in the Engagement Skills Trainer, an indoor simulator using modified weapons that helps raw marksmen train without the expense of live ammunition. Plenty of plinked metal targets from 100 and 200 yards on the sniper rifle half of Range 37. A score of 95 during a round of pistol on the close-quarters arms half, the second-best (behind engineer Wes Gantt) tally among the 20 or so members of the No. 39 team that trekked to Fort Bragg on Monday to get to know their new sponsor.

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Ryan Newman fires a .50-caliber sniper rifle on Range 37.

To Newman, shooting is almost as second-nature as driving a race car. He's been doing it ever since he took possession of his father Greg's old Springfield .30-06 rifle. Other hand-me-downs have included a .22-caliber rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun. He's learned how to shoot a bow, and is adept at shooting skeet. His own modest gun collection also includes two Berettas that came with pole positions at Texas Motor Speedway, and a 7-mm pistol that was a gift of former car sponsor Alltel. So no wonder he took to Fort Bragg like a child at an amusement park, curious about everything from night-vision goggles to body armor, getting his hands on machine guns and rocket launchers, firing that big, booming .50-caliber again and again until he basically had to be dragged off the range.

"I guess I'm an outdoorsman more than anything," Newman says on the bus ride back to the Stewart-Haas shop in Kannapolis, N.C. "I like hunting, I like fishing, I like being outdoors, I like splitting wood. Guns are a part of that, and the ability to kill your own animal for food is part of that. In a roundabout way, the outdoorsman in me ties in with the Army."

With Newman, though, it's a little more complicated than that. He's widely known as an outdoorsman, clearly knows his way around a firearm, and is as proficient behind a scope as he is behind the wheel. Yet he's not car owner Richard Childress, who will travel the world stalking exotic big game to add to his impressive collection, much of which is on display at the RCR museum in Welcome, N.C. To Newman, it's more about the environment and the experience. He won't shoot a doe with fawns nearby, he won't shoot an immature buck, he won't shoot anything unless he plans to use the meat. His enjoyment comes from his surroundings, not seeing a 16-point head mounted to a wall.

"It's kind of like fishing. I've always said, I enjoy the act of fishing, and I enjoy catching fish, because they're two entirely different things," he says. "You have to actively fish to catch. But you don't have to catch to enjoy actively fishing. Outdoors with hunting, you don't have to kill something, or you don't have to slaughter something to enjoy the outdoors. Too many people don't get that. Too many people think that they're killing an animal just out of rage. There are so many people that kill animals just out of rage, because they're upset with their life, they're upset with their wife, they're upset with the car that they drive, whatever. Typically those are the people that laugh hysterically afterward, because after they kill something, it's a release."

If the Army places a premium on patience and judiciousness with a firearm, then Newman fits the mold. Ask him how many animals he's taken down, and the answer will surprise you -- none. Not a deer. Not a duck. Nothing. He went hunting last week in Illinois, and didn't kill anything but time. He's not averse to it, he hasn't suddenly turned into a card-carrying member of PETA. To hear him tell it, the right situation just hasn't come up.

"I can go to McDonald's. I can afford to buy a Happy Meal. I can afford to buy a Whopper. I don't need that animal to eat," he says. "Everything that my wife's uncle or my buddies kill, we eat it. We had a smoked deer ham for Christmas. Last year we had two smoked deer hams, a pork butt and some other things for Christmas. To me that's more what it's for. It's not just the art of killing."

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Ryan Newman stands in the weapons vault at Fort Bragg.

All of which brings us back to Fort Bragg, where Newman is completely enveloped in the experience, even if it involves using lasers instead of ammunition, and firing at metal targets when live rounds are in the weapon. His crewmen, many of them hunters themselves, are into it, too. "Dang, this is fun. I'm going to join the Army," one of them exclaims while firing a sniper rifle, providing just the kind of recruiting-aid enthusiasm the Army wants to get out of its NASCAR sponsorship. Mechanic Jay Guarneri scrapes up his elbow firing the big Barrett, the recoil of the weapon grinding his forearm into the concrete. He doesn't mind at all. "Good times," he says, smiling. "Got pictures of it and all."

Newman and his party receive VIP treatment, dining in the officer's area of the surprisingly good mess hall ($4.25 for a lunch of veal parmesan, egg noodles and peas and carrots) and shaking hands with generals, colonels and majors at every stop. With good reason -- Newman has instantly become one of the highest-profile recruiting tools the Army has, and through him the service is trying to send a message. Col. Andrew Milani, chief of staff of the Special Operations Command headquartered at Fort Bragg, charges Newman and his crew with spreading the gospel of a modern, professional Army, one where morale is high and Special Forces troops are mostly married and hold college degrees. The driver understands that it's part of the job.

"I know it's part of my mission and part of why I'm their representative, to recruit people to be able to defend our country for years to come," Newman says. "I'm totally cool with that. I just want to make sure I do it in the most efficient and effective way, and do it in a way they are proud of and will make a difference. It's not something that's easy. You're recruiting people who are risking their lives. It's not an easy sell."

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On his third attempt, Ryan Newman was able to "fly" in the wind tunnel.

It's tremendous fun, watching things explode and firing big guns. Later in the day, the group will watch a mock takedown of an urban building, one where a five-man fire team blows open doors and retrieves a sheepish hostage -- Newman, of course -- from an interior room. Just watching it requires wearing a 25-pound chest plate, combat helmet, ear protection and goggles. The last stop of the day is a vertical wind tunnel used to train paratroopers, who bob and tumble effortlessly in the mock freefall conditions simulated by the 3,600-horsepower fan roaring overhead. Newman and his gang, quite conspicuous in their yellow trainee suits, are considerably less graceful. But on a third attempt, Newman at last gets the body posture down and Rocketman begins to fly.

"That was bad ass," he says afterward, the impression of his goggles still evident on his face. "Not everybody can say they've done that."

But behind it all is deadly serious business. Fort Bragg is the key staging area for the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, with 5,300 soldiers deployed in theatre. The pop-pop-pop of rifles being discharged somewhere on the fort's 130 acres of firing ranges is ever-present. Buildings are decorated with symbols like skulls, scorpions or crosshairs, and Latin phrases like "Vertias et Libertas ("Truth and Liberty") or "De Oppresso Liber" ("To Free the Oppressed"). Shell casings are everywhere, as ubiquitous on the ground as pine straw and fire ant mounds. Soldiers practice escaping from an overturned Humvee. Helicopters whir overhead. All this training is for a reason.

And then there are the men, soldiers and instructors and officers who have performed multiple tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. Arthur Doame, the manager of the vertical wind tunnel, did three tours in Vietnam. Keith Carr, manager of the Engagement Skills Trainer, spent more than two decades "jumping out of airplanes and kicking down doors," as he puts it. Why? "We love it," Sgt. Maj. Pete Gould says out on Range 37. He oversees a sniper company and has been in Special Forces for 25 years. "It's an addictive game, an addictive sport that we do." Experiencing just a taste of the unique thrill of firing live military weapons, it's easy to see why.

Newman, willing to ask about anything or try anything, fits right in. Soldiers seem to respect and appreciate the fact that he knows his way around weapons and is almost immediately comfortable with the tools of their lethal trade. Master Sgt. Teddy Lanier, a native North Carolinian who says he was raised to believe that babies drank SunDrop in their bottles and that Dale Earnhardt would one day become president, welcomes his new driver with open arms. "It means a lot to me that you are driving that U.S. Army car," he says.

This from men built like NFL linebackers, who have jumped into hostile areas and taken enemy fire, who have risked their lives again and again in defense of their country. It's humbling praise for a race car driver, a fact Newman seems to understand. "I have the flag on my car," he says. "I'm representing the United States of America, I'm representing freedom, and I'm representing them and their ability to fight for it." Suddenly, the weight of his Army-backed Chevrolet feels considerably heavier than the NASCAR-mandated 3,450 pounds. Leaving Fort Bragg, Newman's mission is only beginning.

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"We love it. It's an addictive game, an addictive sport that we do." -- Sgt. Maj. Pete Gould

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.