'Relieved': Bubba Wallace backs down after insisting 'it's a straight-up noose’

NASCAR’s Bubba Wallace expressed his relief that he was not the victim of a hate crime after claiming the rope found in his car stall at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama was a “straight-up noose.”

“It’s been an emotional few days,” Wallace said in a statement on Twitter Wednesday afternoon. “First off, I want to say how relieved I am that the investigation revealed that this wasn’t what we feared it was. I want to thank my team, NASCAR and the FBI for acting swiftly and treating this as a real threat. I think we’ll gladly take a little embarrassment over what the alternatives could have been.”