NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace told “Watters’ World” in an interview broadcast Saturday that “at the end of the day, nothing would have changed” about how he handled the discovery of a garage cable tied to a rope in the team of your team. Talladega Superspeedway garage.
“I felt NASCAR did the right thing …” Wallace told host Jesse Watters. “It was a rope, everyone has seen the picture now. So saying that we would go back and do things differently, I don’t think so. Maybe say things differently, yes, but I would initiate an investigation.”
WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH BUBBA WALLACE AT ‘WATTERS’ WORLD ‘SATURDAY AT 8 PM ET ON FOX NEWS
The FBI determined earlier this week that the rope, which was discovered in Wallace’s garage on the night of June 21, had been there in October 2019, and therefore could not have been a racist gesture towards Wallace, the NASCAR Cup The only full-time African-American driver in the series, who had been assigned that spot in the garage only for last weekend’s race.
On Thursday, NASCAR released an image of the garage door pull rope, noting that an internal investigation found that of the 1,684 garage stops on the circuit’s 29 tracks, only 11 had a rope tied in a knot. The only rope was the one from Wallace’s garage.
Wallace said his team member who found the tie and reported it to NASCAR “did his research and walked up and down the garages to double-check and make sure it wasn’t just the symbol that was in all the garages.
“But it ended up being ours alone,” Wallace added, “so he finally contacted the crew chief. When the crew chief contacted NASCAR, officials stepped in, the leadership contacted me saying a knot was found and that they were taking the necessary steps to enter the investigation. “
BUBBA WALLACE BRIDE REACTS TO FBI INVESTIGATION
Wallace, who leads for Richard Petty Motorsports, has been a vocal advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement and was instrumental in NASCAR’s recent decision to ban the Confederate flag at its events. He said to Watters that perhaps he should have asked to see the rope “for me in person to have a true understanding … [and to] get a picture for me. “
However, Wallace emphatically denied that the incident was a publicity stunt.
“Let’s clear it up …” he said. “I don’t need all the fame and all the media enthusiasm to create my brand and create my image. People who know me know that I am 100 percent raw and real and I just go out there and give it my all on the track.” “
When asked if he was a victim of a hate crime, Wallace said, “He didn’t necessarily think that someone in our community would do that.”
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“Did I think he was a track worker? Possibly, yes,” he said. “But getting to the bottom of this, someone has linked this, whether it be a bad joke or whatever they have thought, whatever their intention, it was not attacking or scaring me. It was something that happened to happen to be in my garage for the next race “
Fox News’ Gary Gastelu contributed to this report.
