Bubba Wallace said on Wednesday he was relieved the FBI has concluded the noose found his garage stall at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway was not part of a hate crime, but frustrated by reactions that have suggested the investigation was an overreaction.
“I was relieved just like many others to know that it wasn’t targeted towards me,” Wallace told NBC’s Today on Wednesday. “But it’s still frustrating to know that people are always going to test you and always just going to try and debunk you and that’s what I’m trying to wrap my head around now, from people saying I’m a fake … or that I reported it when it was information that was brought to me.”
Wallace, the only full-time black driver in Nascar’s top flight, found himself in the national spotlight after the organization announced late Sunday that a hate symbol was found in his garage. An immediate probe was launched and on Tuesday the FBI announced the garage door pull rope fashioned like a noose had been positioned there since as early as last fall, long before Wallace’s team was assigned the stall ahead of this weekend’s Geico 500.
The 26-year-old Alabama native insisted on Wednesday the decision of a team member, David Cropps, to report the incident was not an overreaction, particularly in light of today’s fraught racial climate.
“Are we hypersensitive to everything that’s going on in the world now? Absolutely,” Wallace said on ESPN’s First Take. “But if you were in my shoes – and I doubt anybody could walk in my shoes, especially at this moment – you would go down that route time and time again.”
He continued: “Yes, it was a garage pull for our stall at Talladega, but that was in the solid shape of a noose. And when my guys seen that, when my crew member had seen that – who happened to be African American – he did his research first, and I was very proud of that. David Cropps – a guy I’ll stand by in any trenches, any day – walked up and down the garages to make sure he wasn’t overreacting. And when he seen that the other garage pulls were basically just a solid piece of rope, no knots in them, and we had a knot that was in the shape of a noose – yeah, that calls [for an investigation].”
The incident came two weeks after Wallace, who drives the No 43 Chevrolet for motor sport icon Richard Petty’s team, successfully campaigned for Nascar to ban the Confederate flag at its tracks and properties.
Nascar’s ban of the rebel standard got off to a checkered start on Sunday at Talladega, the first large-scale sporting event in the US to allow fans to attend since the start of the coronavirus outbreak. While it was hard to find inside the venue, a plane circling above the track with the message ‘DEFUND NASCAR’ trailing behind the Confederate flag.
Additionally, two dozen demonstrators carrying the flag drove back and forth along a road outside the property in protest of the policy.
