Bubba Wallace and NASCAR faced one of their most challenging times in 2020. Being the only black full-time driver in the Cup Series, Wallace had successfully led a campaign to remove the Confederate flag from NASCAR events that year. Days later, a noose was found hanging in his garage at the Talladega Superspeedway.
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Fans who were not okay with the flag’s removal also paraded the flag outside the track that weekend. This led to reports that a hate crime was targeted at the driver. However, the FBI had concluded that the noose [originally a garage door pull rope] had been present there for years earlier and that it was just a coincidence that Wallace was allotted that specific garage.
In a recent interview, Wallace spoke about the entire sequence and touched on how fans’ attitudes towards him changed afterward. He said, “It was there before we even got there. Just one in a million coincidences that I had that garage stall. In fact, it was tied in a fashion like that it could have been this small; it doesn’t matter.”
The rough time Wallace faced after the 2020 Talladega weekend
Wallace was a popular driver even back then. He had risen through the ranks pretty quickly and held a lot of potential. He drove the No. 43 car for Richard Petty Motorsports at the time. The incident at Talladega and his activism in getting the Confederate flag banned had however put a dent in his popularity.
He said, “I went from being one of the most — I wouldn’t say the most liked drivers — but favorable drivers. But now it’s just been the boos and stuff. And that’s okay because it’s sports … Booing is a part of sports in general. But the next week after Talladega, it was like a light switch. It was like, ‘Whoa! Wow. Holy [ __ ] I didn’t ask for this.'”
He knows from experience and knowledge that things get much worse only when the haters stop making noise. So, he began adapting to the negativity and has rose all the more higher for it.
