Show of solidarity for Bubba
Blaney wins at Talladega as NASCAR rallies behind its only Black driver
TALLADEGA, ALA.» The No. 43 car edged down pit road on Monday afternoon, its NASCAR rivals unusually close at hand just minutes before a race.
Top drivers and their crews, wearing masks for one of the first races of the coronavirus era, were on the march with the Chevrolet Camaro that Bubba Wallace, the lone Black racer in NASCAR’s premier series, would soon drive around one of the most fearsome courses in motor sports.
But at that very moment Monday, the Justice Department and NASCAR officials were investigating whether one of the people on pit road — or someone else who had gained access to the garage at Talladega Superspeedway — had placed a noose in Wallace’s stall a day earlier.
“We don’t have a lot of answers at this moment,” Steve Phelps, the NASCAR president, said before the race Monday. “Obviously, this is a very, very serious act. We take it as such.”
The episode cast a distressing shadow over the Geico 500, which was postponed from Sunday because of lightning and heavy rain, less than two weeks after NASCAR banished the Confederate flag from its races and properties. Wallace had pressed for the policy change, which amounted to a drastic denouncement of decades of NASCAR culture, and drove a car with a Black Lives Matter message in the race after the ban.
After the Geico 500’s emotional start — Wallace laid his head on the top of his car, while the coowner of his team, Richard Petty, patted him on the back — Wallace put on a competitive race for his home-state crowd. From the 24th position, he climbed into the top 10 for much of the race’s second half and briefly took the lead near the end.
It wasn’t enough for a win, as Ryan Blaney took the top spot and Wallace fell to 14th because of fuel issues. But it was enough to bring much of the small crowd to its feet, waving T-shirts and lifting drink cans in respect.
Afterward Wallace climbed from his car and approached the stands with his right fist raised. He shook hands with fans, including several wearing Black Lives Matter T-shirts. They shouted their support in return.
“I’m sorry, I’m not wearing a mask,” he said in an interview with Fox Sports after the race. “But I wanted to show whoever it was that you’re not going to take away my smile.”
The winner, Blaney, and Wallace are longtime friends. “You hate to see your buddy sad and hurting,” Blaney said in a news conference after the race, recalling when Wallace told him about the noose Sunday evening.
Blaney held onto the lead after a restart with two laps to go Monday, earning his second straight win at Talladega Superspeedway.
“I think it’s great that everybody really came together,” Blaney said. “I don’t want it to be remembered as a terrible day or a bad day in NASCAR.
“I want it to be remembered as there was an incident and we all overcame it together and showed that we’re not going to take it any more.”
It was that kind of bittersweet day and weekend.
Blaney nipped Ricky Stenhouse Jr. at the finish line by .007 seconds for his fourth win and first since Talladega in October, albeit this time before a mostly empty venue. It was a race marked by support for Wallace instead of another Big One at Talladega, though there was mayhem behind Blaney on the final lap and he also pushed Erik Jones into the wall near the finish.
“Just trying to block, block the best we could,” Blaney said. “Block the top, block the bottom ... just beating and banging to the line. ”
Aric Almirola spun at the end and crossed the line almost backward.
Ford has now won nine of the last 10 Cup races at Talladega, and all three Team Penske drivers have won this season.
Although investigators said little Monday about the status or course of their inquiry, NASCAR officials said the garage was fitted with surveillance cameras. Phelps declined to say how many had been installed or whether they were working at the time of the episode on Sunday. But Wallace’s mother, Desiree Wallace, said in a text message Monday that the cameras were “not where the noose was hung.”
But Phelps said that access restrictions that officials imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic were aiding the investigation. People are largely barred from the infield, with racing teams and a handful of essential workers as the only people permitted.
In a statement Monday, Jay E. Town, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, said federal officials were “reviewing the situation surrounding the noose that was found in Bubba Wallace’s garage to determine whether there are violations of federal law.”
“Regardless of whether federal charges can be brought, this type of action has no place in our society,” Town said.
The 82-year-old Petty, at his first race since the coronavirus pandemic began and at Talladega on race day for the first time in more than 10 years, said he was “enraged” by what had happened.
“The sick person who perpetrated this act must be found, exposed and swiftly and immediately expelled from NASCAR,” Petty said before he joined Wallace at the track Monday afternoon. “I believe in my heart this despicable act is not representative of the competitors I see each day in the NASCAR garage area. I stand shoulder to shoulder with Bubba, yesterday, today, tomorrow and every day forward.”