Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr. will run a #BlackLivesMatter paint scheme on his No. 43 Richard Petty Motorsports Chevrolet in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway on Wednesday. Wallace, the only African American driver at the top level, said it’s the “most powerful hashtag going around” in a video Tuesday announcing the paint scheme, which is undeniably unique for the sport.
While Wallace and Richard Petty Motorsports received praise for the car — which has #BlackLivesMatter on the quarter panels and “Compassion, Love, Understanding.” written on the hood and bumper — from fans and people in NASCAR, San Francisco 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman was impressed too.
In response to a tweet from NASCAR’s official account promoting images of the paint scheme, the Super Bowl champion said he respects it and applauded Wallace, and presumably the team, for the “courage to take this stand in this sport.”
For the last two weeks, people en masse have been protesting around the country and globe against systemic racism while demanding justice for victims of police brutality, like George Floyd, who died on Memorial Day after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for almost nine minutes.
Sunday before NASCAR’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Wallace wore a shirt with “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe” — three of Floyd’s and Eric Garner’s final words — written on the front. He wore it on pit road during pre-race traditions like a prayer and the national anthem, and when he got into the No. 43 Chevrolet, he passed the shirt off to a crew member, who then held it up before the green flag flew during a statement from NASCAR president Steve Phelps about racism, followed by a moment of silence.
In the video announcing the paint scheme, Wallace explained how the car was inspired by last week’s Blackout Tuesday and why he specifically wanted #BlackLivesMatter on his car. He said, in part:
“Our team brought that idea to me, and I jumped all over it. And we had further conversations of, ‘Let’s make a statement behind it and run a foundation or a charity [on it] that’s helping push the narrative and the initiative of what’s going on in the world today, racial inequality. Let’s find somebody that aligns with that.’ And why not dive straight to the root and putting #BlackLivesMatter on the car? Most powerful hashtag going around, I feel like, especially these last couple days, last couple months really.
“And it’s true: Black lives do matter. It’s not that we’re saying, ‘No other lives matter.’ We’re trying to say, ‘Black lives matter, too.’ If we put ‘t-o-o’ on the end, I think a lot more people would understand it. We want to be treated equally and not judged off our skin color and the actions that we get to ensure are based off of our skin color.”
Wednesday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway, officially the Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 500, is at 7 p.m. ET on FS1.
