From banning the Confederate flag to the FBI investigating a potential hate crime against Bubba Wallace, it’s been a wild couple of weeks for NASCAR.
Fortunately, the noose that was found in Wallace’s garage in Alabama had been placed there in October, long before that space was even assigned to Wallace, the only Black driver in NASCAR’s top series.
NASCAR driver Chris Buescher was among those relieved by this finding.
“Thankfully there was no hate crime and nothing intentional,” Buescher said on The DA Show. “Putting that aside, what happened was incredible. It was so awesome and made me so proud of our sport to see everybody stand together in support. We want to be very clear: we want everybody to feel like they can safely be a part of our sport, and anybody that wants to get into it, you’re welcome. That’s a lot of what that was. It was so neat to see everybody stand with [Wallace].”
Indeed, NASCAR drivers stood with Wallace prior to the Geico 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama on Monday. It was an incredible moment of solidarity.
“What I didn’t like about it is we didn’t have our grandstands packed out so that everybody could see it in person,” Buescher said. “It was truly a special moment for our sport. It made us proud. It really did. It was so neat to see it, to come together and trying to show that we want to do better and that we’re going to work hard to do that. Thankfully it was not something intentional, but what resulted out of it was nothing short of amazing.”