TALLADEGA − Bubba Wallace won his first career Nascar race yesterday to become the first black driver to win a major race in that series in 58 years.
The driver was in the lead with his number 23 car, co-owned by Michael Jordan, when the race was shortened to 117 laps because of heavy rain.
Bubba, who had taken the lead on lap 113 in the race, which was postponed from its original start time on Sunday, joins Wendell Scott, the first black driver to take a Nascar chequered flag, in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1963.
Bubba was thrust into the spotlight last year when his calls for Nascar to ban the Confederate flag − which many Americans see as a symbol of oppression − at all events was ultimately adopted.
The driver was later thought to have been a victim of a racial attack when a noose – a symbol connected to lynching and America's slave history – was found in his garage at Talladega Superspeedway.
The noose, according to Nascar, was actually a garage door pull rope fashioned like a noose and the US Justice Department said, after an FBI investigation, that Bubba was not the target of a hate crime.
Although the racing world rallied behind him during the incident, Bubba would later come under fire from then US president, Donald Trump, over the incident. – Reuters, October 5, 2021
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