Outspoken left-wing NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace made history as the first black driver to win the Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday.
Wallace’s win came after he experienced a “rain delay, two overtimes” and concerns about possibly running out of fuel against Kyle Larson, CBS News reported.
The win represented Wallace’s first win since 2022, breaking a “100-race winless streak.”
During the race, Larson initially trailed behind Wallace “by 5.057 seconds with 14 laps to go,” and then narrowed it down to a three second gap between the two, with six laps remaining before they were faced with a rain delay:
The final gap between Wallace and Larson was 0.222 seconds on Sunday.
Larson trailed by 5.057 seconds with 14 laps to go, but the gap was down to about three seconds with six remaining when the yellow flag came out because of rain. The cars rolled to a stop on pit lane with four to go, giving Wallace about 20 additional minutes to think and rethink his restart strategy.
But after beating Larson through the second turn, a crash behind the leaders forced a second overtime, extending the race even more laps as Wallace’s team thought he might run out of gas.
“This one’s really cool,” Wallace stated, according to the Associated Press. “Coming off Turn 4, I knew I was going to get there — unless we ran out of gas. I was surprised I wasn’t crying like a little baby.”
As Breitbart News previously reported, in June 2020, NASCAR issued a statement claiming a noose had been discovered in Wallace’s garage stall Talladega Speedway.
Wallace issued a statement at the time that the “despicable act of racism and hatred” had left him feeling “incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society.”
After conducting an investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) determined that the alleged noose was actually a pull rope, and that it had “been in place there since at least last October.”
Breitbart News previously reported in October 2022, Wallace and Larson were engaged in a heated confrontation after they crashed at the NASCAR Cup Series South Point 400 in Las Vegas. While on Turn 3, Larson attempted to pass Wallace, but ended up putting Wallace into the wall, which led to Wallace appearing to retaliate by “striking the rear of Larson’s car.”
Wallace and Larson were later seen outside of their vehicles, with Wallace confronting Larson and shoving him.
