TMS president Gossage disgusted by noose being found in Bubba Wallace’s garage
Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage called it an unforgivable act of hate.
Someone placed a noose in the garage stall of Bubba Wallace, NASCAR’s only Black driver, at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday. NASCAR has launched an investigation to find the individual(s) responsible for the act with intentions of banning them from the sport forever.
“It’s just disgusting,” Gossage said. “I’m proud of NASCAR’s response. They’ve brought in the FBI, which is the right thing to do. The FBI does not play around. I feel pretty strongly that they’re going to find whoever this person is and they’ll be out of this sport forever, as they should be. There’s no room for this.
“What these ignorant people don’t understand, it doesn’t matter what issue, whether you’re left wing or right wing, there are extremists on both sides,” he continued. “When you do something like this, you’re not helping your cause any because this has been, as it should, universally condemned.
“I don’t know Bubba well, but I know him some and have always enjoyed talking to him. I support him totally. I think everybody in the sport does,” Gossage said. “Whoever this person is, is done for. They’re out. We don’t want them around.”
On June 10, NASCAR announced that it was banning the Confederate flag from all of its racing facilities, a symbol it’s tried to distance itself from for years. The ban following Wallace’s push for it, which came in the wake of social justice protests that were sparked by the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer last month.
Wallace wrote that the noose being left in his garage stall left him “incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society and how persistent we must be in the right against racism. … This will not break me, I will not give in nor will I back down. I will continue to proudly stand for what I believe in.”
Wallace, who drives the No. 43 Chevrolet for Richard Petty Motorsports, has gotten support from some of the sport’s biggest names. Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he’d love to see Wallace win Monday’s race at Talladega. Drivers such as Kyle Busch, Kurt Busch and Joey Logano posted messages with the hashtag #IStandWithBubba.
Every driver and crew member pushed Wallace’s car to the front of the field during a pre-race show of support before Monday’s Geico 500.
Gossage became the latest to voice his support of Wallace.
“I just can’t tell you how awful I felt when I saw this news on Sunday night,” Gossage said. “I can’t put it into words and I never struggle with words. It’s just, ‘C’mon, really? This is the response?’ It’s just awful. It makes our sport look horrible.
“For someone clearly within the sport to do this ... that’s just unforgivable.”
NASCAR has fought a negative public perception on race-related issues for years. From the Confederate flags flying at tracks to one of its drivers, Kyle Larson, dropping the n-word during an iRacing event a couple months ago, the sport seems to face these issues on a seemingly endless basis.
“Progress has been made,” Gossage said. “I would tell you the people within the sport are good people, whether crew members or drivers or team owners or PR/marketing folks. They’re all good people.
“But you’ve always got some bad people in any group. There’s always some bad people that do stupid things that makes everyone else look bad. It’s just a shame. This doesn’t speak for the sport.”
TMS will host its first NASCAR race weekend of the 2020 season next month. All three NASCAR series are scheduled to run July 18-19.
This story was originally published June 22, 2020 at 4:00 PM.
