NASCAR’s Bubba Wallace insisted that a rope hanging in his car stall at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama was a noose and not just a garage door pull rope.
“I’ve been racing all of my life. We’ve raced out of hundreds of garages that never had garage pulls like that. So, people that want to call it a garage pull and put out all the videos and photos of knots as their evidence, go ahead. But from the evidence that we have, that I have, it’s a straight-up noose,” Wallace told CNN’s Don Lemon on Tuesday.
“Whether tied in 2019, or whatever, it was a noose. So, it wasn’t directed at me, but somebody tied a noose,” he added.
The driver’s comments followed the FBI and Justice Department saying that they found no federal hate crime was committed after the noose was discovered in his car stall earlier this week. Wallace, NASCAR’s only black driver, “was not the target of a hate crime,” and the rope fashioned like a noose had been hanging in the stall since last year, the FBI and DOJ said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.
“The FBI report concludes, and photographic evidence confirms, that the garage door pull rope fashioned like a noose had been positioned there since as early as last fall. This was obviously well before the 43 team’s arrival and garage assignment. We appreciate the FBI’s quick and thorough investigation and are thankful to learn that this was not an intentional, racist act against Bubba,” NASCAR said in a statement.
Amid protests demanding racial equality, Wallace pushed earlier this month for the Confederate flag to be banned from the sport, leading NASCAR to prohibit the display of the flag at all of its events and properties.
