He also said that after a full sweep of all 29 tracks and 1,684 garage positions on the race track, authorities found 11 deployable strings tied in a knot, but only one rope:
“He discovered her Sunday in the Bubba Wallace garage,” NASCAR President Steve Phelps said at a press conference on Thursday.
Wallace is the only black driver on the NASCAR superior circuit.
“As you can see from the photo, the rope was real, as was our concern for Bubba,” said Phelps.
He added that a recently completed NASCAR investigation could not determine who tied the tie.
“How did the rope get there? Was someone a target?”
The rope had been designed in 2019. Phelps couldn’t say why no one had reported it until last weekend.
“We further determined that the rope was not in place when the October 2019 race weekend began, but was created sometime during that weekend,” said Phelps. “Given the time and garage access policies and procedures at the time, unfortunately we were unable to determine with certainty who tied this rope this way or why it was done.”
In the future, NASCAR will install additional cameras in garage areas.
The discovery of the rope last week at Wallace’s garage stall in Talladega came as the United States, and NASCAR in particular, more directly addressed systemic racism in the United States in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd.
“The investigation also revealed evidence, including an authentic video confirmed by NASCAR, that the rope found in garage number 4 was in that garage as early as October 2019,” the FBI said in a statement. “Although it is now known that the rope was in garage number 4 in 2019, no one could have known that Mr. Wallace would be assigned to garage number 4 last week.”
On Sunday, the day the rope was seen, NASCAR said it was outraged “at this heinous act” and that the sport has no room for racism. “We have launched an immediate investigation and will do our best to identify those responsible and remove them from the sport,” he said in a statement.
In his conference Thursday, Phelps said that, in retrospect, NASCAR should have used the word “alleged” when describing the rope’s finding and reaction.
“What we saw was a symbol of hatred and was only present in one area of the garage, that of Bubba Wallace’s 43 car,” he said.
Phelps said the heightened emotions surrounding the recent Confederate flag ban played a role in NASCAR’s response. The original statement should perhaps have been toned down, he said.
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