Bubba Wallace rejects ‘garage pull’ explanation: ‘It’s a straight up noose’

NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace rejected the explanation that the rope at his garage space at the Talladega track was a garage pull.

In an appearance on CNN, NASCAR’s only black driver told host Don Lemon that the offending rope was definitely a noose, intended as a lynching threat.

“I’ve been racing all of my life, we’ve raced out of hundreds of garages that never had garage pulls like that. … It’s a straight up noose,” he said.

“I’ve been racing all of my life, we’ve raced out of hundreds of garages that never had garage pulls like that. … It’s a straight up noose.”

Bubba Wallace to Don Lemon. pic.twitter.com/HnJYpbPrlZ

— Jordan Heck (@JordanHeckFF) June 24, 2020

Earlier Tuesday, the FBI released a report that said no hate crime took place because, among other things, the rope at the track had been fashioned in the form of a noose in October 2019 and “nobody could have known Mr. Wallace would be assigned to garage number 4 last week.”

Mr. Wallace dismissed that as people who “put out old videos and photos of knots as their evidence,” he said.

According to Mr. Wallace, “the FBI has stated it was a noose over and over again, NASCAR leadership has stated it was a noose. I actually got evidence of what was hanging in my garage, over my car.”

What the FBI had said was that the rope was “fashioned like a noose.”