NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace is still trying to understand why there was a noose in his garage stall prior to a race at Talladega Superspeedway, even though the FBI released their findings to state there was no foul play involved in it being in his garage.
NASCAR’s only African-American driver said Wednesday on the TODAY Show that he spoke with FBI investigators twice and they too wondered why a garage pull-string was tied in a noose.
“It was a rope-pull from a garage door, it was attached. The image you see in where it was cut, that’s exactly what is was. It was definitely in the shape of a noose, but it wasn’t a functioning noose,” Wallace said Wednesday. “The two conversations I had with the FBI, which I never thought I’d talk to the FBI in my lifetime, but hey, there’s always something new. … The first one was right after the race and then the second conversation was the final one, they gave me lowdown on the investigation research they had completed and found out it was a garage pull.
“It was a noose. Whoever had the time to create that and tie it up like that … the (FBI) was skeptical about it. When the FBI says those types of things … and I told them that I told my team members, ‘Are we sure this isn’t something we’re taking out of context?’ And the FBI backed my team up and reiterated that if you were to see this at this time, you’d stand with your team on why they were so alert. It is what it is.”
He also stated that he has photo evidence of the noose that is very alerting:
“When I did find out, I was very adamant on searching all of the garages and making sure that this wasn’t a garage pull and it ended up being one,” Wallace told Today Show on Wednesday morning. “The photo evidence that I’ve seen that I have in my possession of what was in our garage is exactly a garage pull, it is, that is a noose.
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I don’t know when we’ll get to the point to release that image, but it’s, if anybody sees it, it’s alerting and it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up for sure. All in all, like NASCAR says, I wouldn’t change a thing, I would alert the NASCAR officials and let them take care of it, if I had seen it in person, let them know about it and let them take care of if.”
Seven-time NASCAR Cup Series Champion Jimmie Johnson says he was comforted knowing this wasn’t a mean-spirited and targeted symbol of hate against Wallace.
