NASCAR: Richard Petty Motorsports statement on Bubba Wallace situation

Richard Petty Motorsports have released a statement on the situation surrounding Bubba Wallace and what was first believed to be a noose in their NASCAR garage stall.

Late Sunday night, after the NASCAR Cup Series race at Talladega Superspeedway had been postponed to Monday afternoon due to rain, it was reported that a noose was found in the garage stall of the #43 Richard Petty Motorsports team.

Richard Petty Motorsports’ driver, Bubba Wallace, is the sport’s lone full-time African-American driver, and he has been the subject of many discussions within the sport throughout recent weeks given the race-related events that have transpired throughout the United States.

The drivers and teams of the sport rallied behind the driver of the #43 Chevrolet ahead of Monday’s race and expressed their anger and sadness that such an occurrence could take place.

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But following an FBI investigation, it was revealed that there was never any noose placed within the stall as a hate crime. What was thought to be the noose was a simple garage pull rope that had been positioned like a noose.

This scaffold knot had been there since the October playoff race at the four-turn, 2.66-mile (4.281-kilometer) high-banked oval in Lincoln, Alabama. Naturally, there were no charges filed, as there was no hate crime committed.

NASCAR and the FBI both released statements about the matter, and Wallace himself is slated to address the issue this evening on CNN. NASCAR President Steve Phelps addressed the media during a teleconference this evening.

Now Richard Petty Motorsports have also issued a response to the FBI’s findings and everything that led up to this investigation.

Wallace was reportedly never aware that the rope in question was in the garage stall, and according to the FBI’s investigation, nobody could have predicted that it would be this stall to which the #43 team were assigned for this event.