NASCAR: Who reported the ‘noose’ in Bubba Wallace’s stall?

NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace said that the apparent noose in his garage stall at Talladega Superspeedway was reported by crew member David Cropps.

After an FBI investigation was launched over an apparent noose found in the garage stall of Bubba Wallace’s #43 Richard Petty Motorsports team at Talladega Superspeedway, it was determined that there had not been a hate crime committed against the lone African-American driver of the NASCAR Cup Series.

A total of 15 FBI agents unearthed this conclusion, despite NASCAR calling the situation a “heinous act of racism” and Wallace calling it a “despicable act of racism and hatred”.

Wallace, who had already been in the spotlight in recent weeks due to the racial tensions within the United States and the way which NASCAR has responded to the issues, has since done a number of interviews about the situation, and he has addressed a number of topics pertaining to this whole situation.

More from NASCAR Cup Series

• NASCAR Cup Series: New team set to compete in 2024
• NASCAR: Surprising name continuously linked to new seat
• NASCAR driver at risk of missing the Daytona 500?
• NASCAR set for rare appearance last seen 13 years ago
• NASCAR team adds third car, names driver for 2024 Daytona 500

This past week, Wallace spoke on ESPN’s “First Take” and identified the person who first reported the ripe in question.

“When my crew guy, who happens to be African-American, saw that he did his research first,” Wallace explained. “I was very proud of that. David Cropps, a guy I’ll stand by in any trenches on any day, walked up and down the garages to make sure he wasn’t overreacting. He saw that other garage pulls were basically just a solid piece of rope, no knots in them, and we have a knot that’s in the shape of a noose.”

On Saturday evening, in an interview with Fox News’ Jesse Watters on “Watters’ World”, Wallace again spoke about Cropps, an African-American who serves as a mechanic for the #43 team, reporting the apparent noose. He noted that despite the public backlash, there was no overreaction from anybody.

“David Cropps, my team member there, I talked to him numerous amounts of times since the incident,” said Wallace. “He said before he overreacted he did his research and walked up and down the garages to double check to make sure that it wasn’t just a symbol that was throughout every garage. But it ended up just being only ours, so he eventually contacted the crew chief.”

Wallace is set to compete this afternoon in the second of two races at Pocono Raceway in what is the first ever Cup Series doubleheader weekend. This race, the Pocono 350, is set to be broadcast live on Fox Sports 1 beginning at 4:00 p.m. ET.