Drive to diversify alive
Wallace’s win gives NASCAR renewed hope
The first time a black driver won a NASCAR race, it took 47 years before the sport officially acknowledged the victory. Wendell Scott received the trophy posthumously in 2010 for the race he won in 1963 at Jacksonville’s Speedway Park, where Buddy Baker was first declared the winner.
You can fill in the blanks of why there were technical difficulties: NASCAR would have been honoring a black driver during the rise of the civil-rights movement.
Fifty years later, in a different time and place — geographically and philosophically — Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr. feels the warm embrace of a sport intent on burying those racial divides. It has taken that long for another black driver to step into NASCAR’s Victory Lane.
Wallace won the Camping World Truck Series event at Martinsville Speedway last weekend, setting off a celebratory wave of “attaboys” and hope that the next party won’t be 50 years in waiting.
“When the checkered flag dropped, I heard a big boom from heaven, and my daddy said, ‘Hell, yeah,’ ” said Franklin Scott, Wendell Scott’s son.
This won’t be a gamechanger. NASCAR still is struggling to become a more inclusive workplace when it comes to the signature stars of the sport.
The numbers reflect the struggle: Wallace, 20, is only the fourth full-time black driver in the history of NASCAR’s top three national series, joining Scott, Willy T. Ribbs and Bill Lester. But folks such as Brian France, NASCAR’s chairman and CEO, are pushing hard to change the demographics of the sport.
Wallace is a graduate of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity program, which targets rising minorities for opportunities in the sport.
But getting a ride can take you only so far: You have to have mad skills to drive these machines, and Wallace, who drives a Toyota for Kyle Busch Motorsports, certainly has that covered.
“Regardless of whether you’re red, yellow, black, white or purple, if you can’t get the job done behind the wheel, you’re not going to have a job,” Fox analyst Kyle Petty said. “But Wallace will have a job for a long time to come, and it has nothing to do with his skin color but everything to do with his talent.”
Wallace spent the last few days trying to take it all in while accommodating as many media requests as possible. He didn’t realize the historical significance of his win until he went to the media center after the race.
He already was emotionally overwhelmed, fighting back tears, when his connection with Scott became clear.
It came into sharper focus the next day when he joined Franklin and Wendell Scott Jr. for a news conference.
“It makes you feel good to be part of that family,” Wallace said Tuesday.
The victory ceremony was cool too. And nobody had to wait half a century to get a trophy.