DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – “It wasn’t a hoax. It was real.”
That’s what former FBI supervisory agent Stanley Ruffin tells viewers in “RACE: Bubba Wallace,” a Netflix documentary series that chronicles the only Black driver at NASCAR’s top level and his professional rise and personal role in social justice issues. The series is targeted to a non-NASCAR audience unfamiliar with Wallace’s emergence or the facts surrounding the noose found in his garage stall at an Alabama track.
Wallace had successfully called on NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag at its events in June 2020. Two weeks later, NASCAR officials told Wallace a noose had been discovered in his assigned stall at Talladega Superspeedway.
The incident occurred at the height of a national racial reckoning after the murders of Black men George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery. Wallace felt compelled to take a public position for the first time in his life – he was 26 years old, NASCAR’s only full-time Black driver, and although he drove for icon Richard Petty, Wallace was an underperformer seeking the first win of his Cup Series career.
The FBI investigated and determined the noose had been in that garage stall for months, since the unit had last been used. Wallace was not the victim of a hate crime.