The stubbornness of grace

You forget, sometimes, that theirs is a brotherhood of experience. That not everyone knows what it's like to climb in a bellowing beast and drive for three-plus hours at cartoon speeds, while 40 or so others whirl around you at the same speeds.

They fuss, these stock car boys. They occasionally fight. But in the end, it comes to this: Racers be racers.

You come after one of them, you're coming after all of them.

And so a day after a noose was found hanging in Bubba Wallace's garage stall at Talladega , placed there almost certainly by some Neanderthal insider angry at NASCAR for joining the 21st century, this happened. They surrounded Bubba Wallace's car, and they escorted it to the front of the field.

Drivers. Crew members. Officials. All of them.

I don't know what message the despicable creature with the noose thought he was delivering. But it sure wasn't the message that was received.

Good on ya, NASCAR. Good on ya, indeed.

 

Update: The FBI has determined the noose in Wallace's garage was actually the garage pull rope looped in a noose, and has been that way since last fall. It was only dumb luck that Wallace's team happened to be assigned to that garage.

 

The Blob's take: Thank God.

 

The Blob's further take: Although it was an easy assumption to make that Wallace was targeted, given the national mood, the howls of protest from certain quarters over NASCAR's banning of the Confederate flag, and the fact you couldn't swing a dead cat outside the track without hitting some yokel with a Confederate flag Sunday.

 

The Blob's further, further take: This does nothing, zilch, zero to diminish the NASCAR family's reaction Monday to a perceived attack on one of their own. Still NASCAR's finest moment ever.