NASCAR Releases Photo Of Noose Found In Bubba Wallace’s Garage At Talladega Superspeedway

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – NASCAR released photos of the noose that was discovered in driver Bubba Wallace’s garage stall prior to a recent race at Talladega Superspeedway.

Wallace is NASCAR’s only Black full-time driver.

On June 21, prior to the GEICO 500 race, a garage pull rope in the form of a noose was found in the garage of Wallace’s No. 43 team.

After an FBI investigation, it was determined that the NASCAR driver wasn’t the victim of a hate crime and that the noose was in the garage since at least October 2019.

On Thursday, June 25, NASCAR released an image of the rope that had been fashioned into a noose.

NASCAR releases photo to the media of the garage pull rope formed as a noose from the Bubba Wallace garage Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.
This image was provide by NASCAR. pic.twitter.com/Z4ZyBzpREF

— Marty Smith (@MartySmithESPN) June 25, 2020

In addition to the photo, NASCAR announced that it had finished its investigation into the garage pull.

NASCAR president Steve Phelps defended the organization’s investigation and said “our initial reaction was to protect our driver.”

“Given the facts presented to us, we would have pursued this with the same sense of urgency and purpose. Upon learning of seeing the noose, our initial reaction was to protect our driver. We’re living in a highly-charged and emotional time. What we saw was a symbol of hate, and was only present in one area of the garage — that of the 43 car of Bubba Wallace,” Phelps said Thursday. “In hindsight, we should have — I should have — used the word ‘alleged’ in our statement… As you can see from the photo, the noose was real, as was our concern for Bubba. With similar emotion, others across our industry and our media stood up to defend the NASCAR family — our NASCAR family — because they are part of the NASCAR family too. We were proud to see so many stand up for what’s right.”

Steve Phelps has spoken with Bubba Wallace "a couple times. It's hard. The twists and turns Tuesday was surprising for me, for Bubba, for entire industry. We pointed towards an alleged hate crime. For it to be coincidental, it's difficult."

— Marty Smith (@MartySmithESPN) June 25, 2020

Phelps continued by saying that NASCAR looked at every garage in all 29 race tracks that the sport uses.

Out of the 1,684 garage stalls, no other ropes were discovered in a noose.

“We found only 11 total that had a pull-down rope tied in a knot, and only one noose — the one discovered on Sunday in Bubba Wallace’s garage,” Phelps said.