2020 NASCAR Season Thread

[Red Comet]

2 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

And start by not reading the comments on that tweet.

 

People suck.

 

Yeah, at this point, the best thing to do for everyone involved is to just move on. Can't really say anything else more myself. It's a bigger black eye for NASCAR then anyone else IMO. I'd just recommend not using Twitter for anything except for notifications. 

[See Red]

51 minutes ago, Red Comet said:

 

Yeah, at this point, the best thing to do for everyone involved is to just move on. Can't really say anything else more myself. It's a bigger black eye for NASCAR then anyone else IMO. I'd just recommend not using Twitter for anything except for notifications. 

 

I'm not even sure it's all that much of a black eye.  Per the FBI and NASCAR, out of all of the pulldowns, only one had been fashioned into a noose.  If you're on a team with the lone black driver who's been subject to what he has the last two weeks and you see the rope has been fashioned into a noose, that probably seems pretty suspicious.  If you've never been assigned to that garage, you wouldn't know it's been like that, neither would your teammates.  Check the other garages... not nooses.  Report it to security who presumably didn't know that, and then to the President Steve Phelps.  What's Phelps going to say.. "He's in bay 4?  Oh.  No worries... that's the noose garage!  It's just a misunderstanding."  Of course not, if he knew he'd have ordered it removed long before this. And since NASCAR's not in the business of investigating potential hate crimes you call someone who does.

[raysox]

 

I haven't seen this part mentioned here yet, which clearly is a factor not many people considered either.

The best analogy about the situation that I've seen addressing the dumbasses who are in Bubba's replies saying that HE SHOULD BE PUNISHED???? is that if an airport finds a suspicious backpack, and they evacuate, when the backpack gets discovered to be a misplaced backpack, the airport doesn't get any charges.

 

People are so racist, man. They were so racist they tried to immediately invalidate any of the racism, correctly predicted it, then became more racist. It sucks so hard.

[Red Comet]

19 minutes ago, See Red said:

 

I'm not even sure it's all that much of a black eye.  Per the FBI and NASCAR, out of all of the pulldowns, only one had been fashioned into a noose.  If you're on a team with the lone black driver who's been subject to what he has the last two weeks and you see the rope has been fashioned into a noose, that probably seems pretty suspicious.  If you've never been assigned to that garage, you wouldn't know it's been like that, neither would your teammates.  Check the other garages... not nooses.  Report it to security who presumably didn't know that, and then to the President Steve Phelps.  What's Phelps going to say.. "He's in bay 4?  Oh.  No worries... that's the noose garage!  It's just a misunderstanding."  NASCAR's not in the business of investigating potential hate crimes so you call someone who does.

 

If I'm NASCAR and I'm confronted with a situation that may potentially be life-threatening towards one of my drivers, I would call the FBI. I'd also wait to see what turns up in the investigation before I say anything definitive. "We have received reports of a potential death threat directed against a NASCAR driver, the FBI is investigating this and we will comment on it further when they come back with findings" is a far more reasonable way to handle it than going straight into sensationalism in an already heated environment. There can be such a thing as too much transparency. 

 

Then, we find out everything at once so we don't get people losing their minds when the story isn't even finished yet. 

[See Red]

1 minute ago, Red Comet said:

 

If I'm NASCAR and I'm confronted with a situation that may potentially be life-threatening towards one of my drivers, I would call the FBI. I'd also wait to see what turns up in the investigation before I say anything definitive. "We have received reports of a potential death threat directed against a NASCAR driver, the FBI is investigating this and we will comment on it further when they come back with findings" is a far more reasonable way to handle it than going straight into sensationalism in an already heated environment. 

 

Then, we find out everything upfront so we don't get people losing their minds when the story isn't even finished yet. 

 

What are you going to do, though?  The story is getting out there... there's an investigation so you probably can't release details that might've added important context.  Nobody forced the drivers/teammembers to make their display.

[Red Comet]

6 minutes ago, See Red said:

 

What are you going to do, though?  The story is getting out there... there's an investigation so you probably can't release details that might've added important context.  Nobody forced the drivers/teammembers to make their display.

 

I'd try to keep things as contained as possible regardless of the context in a situation like this. Pretty sure that was SOP pretty recent too. There's going to be a story but without any sort of confirmation, it's a report from a close source. Not blaming the driver or the crew at all (hell, they're going to get the brunt of criticism even if it isn't justified) just stating that things probably could have been handled better and that I shouldn't have had a kneejerk reaction myself. 

[raysox]

Uh yeah this noose sure looks like something you'd report

 

Spoiler

 

 

[See Red]

26 minutes ago, raysox said:

Uh yeah this noose sure looks like something you'd report

 

  Hide contents

 

 

 

Also worth reiterating that this was the only garage with the rope tied like that.  Who ties a garage pull down rope like that?  It may not have been tied like that specifically for Bubba but I would have questions for anybody tasked with tying a loop in a knot that does it like that.

[raysox]

Nascar has been very transparent with all this. They had their tracks check their garages to see how many similar handles they found, and it was 11 of 1684. 
 

they also said the rope wasn’t tied like that at the start of the weekend last October. It truly feels like a crew member needing a better handle on the garage door and doing that. Probably choose a better knot next time, but it doesn’t seem malicious.

[sky1324]

Yeah, NASCAR looks ridiculous, but that quite literally is a noose and I wouldn't blame Bubba's team for reporting it at all. Not sure how they could've known how long it was there without an investigation, but the mistake is on NASCAR for going public with it so quickly. 

[AustinFromBoston]

I don't really see how anyone is at fault for this. 

At worse it's an overreaction, but that's still better than ignoring it or brushing it off. 

 

Regardless it's good that NASCAR did something to promote BLM & solidarity.  

[Red Comet]

1 hour ago, AustinFromBoston said:

I don't really see how anyone is at fault for this. 

At worse it's an overreaction, but that's still better than ignoring it or brushing it off. 

 

Regardless it's good that NASCAR did something to promote BLM & solidarity.  

 

To be fair, a lot of other companies are supporting BLM too. I'm sure a lot are legitimately supporting the movement but it wouldn't shock me if some of it was the cynical "We support good cause X so please give us your money" spiel that you saw when those same companies 15 years ago were loud about supporting the troops.

 

[sportsfan7]

2 hours ago, See Red said:

 

Also worth reiterating that this was the only garage with the rope tied like that.  Who ties a garage pull down rope like that?  It may not have been tied like that specifically for Bubba but I would have questions for anybody tasked with tying a loop in a knot that does it like that.

[AustinFromBoston]

3 hours ago, Red Comet said:

 

To be fair, a lot of other companies are supporting BLM too. I'm sure a lot are legitimately supporting the movement but it wouldn't shock me if some of it was the cynical "We support good cause X so please give us your money" spiel that you saw when those same companies 15 years ago were loud about supporting the troops.

 

Yeah, but it's nice to see specifically NASCAR doing something considering the sports deep ties to the south. 

Banning the confederate flag was a good first step. 

[BBTV]

You're telling me that a racetrack with all those garages... and garage doors hasn't figured out a better solution to pull them down than freaking nooses?  In however many decades it's been in business, you mean nobody has said "maybe, I say maybe, we I say we should install something to pull these there doors down"?  Isn't that like building a house and forgetting all the doorknobs?

 

Serious question - how common is it to know how to tie a noose? I'm not a boy scout or fisherman, and really only know how to tie very basic knots.  Is tying a noose something that a lot of people know how to do?  

[See Red]

2 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

You're telling me that a racetrack with all those garages... and garage doors hasn't figured out a better solution to pull them down than freaking nooses?  In however many decades it's been in business, you mean nobody has said "maybe, I say maybe, we I say we should install something to pull these there doors down"?  Isn't that like building a house and forgetting all the doorknobs?

 

Serious question - how common is it to know how to tie a noose? I'm not a boy scout or fisherman, and really only know how to tie very basic knots.  Is tying a noose something that a lot of people know how to do?  

 

It's usually just a rope pulldown -- NASCAR looked into it and found that out of the 1,000+ garages at the tracks they race at, there was only 11 that had knots tied in them, and this was the only one that was fashioned into a noose.

 

I'm curious about your second question as well.  I never did anything where I had to learn any knots but I learned at a relatively young age the symbolism of nooses in this country.  Then I see people saying "a crew member probably got bored at some point, started messing with the pulldown rope, and forgot to untie the noose he made" like it's no big deal.  People tying/displaying nooses in public seems like a big no-no to me.  Am I wrong there?  Is it just nooses where the rope wraps around 13 times or something?

[BBTV]

9 hours ago, See Red said:

 

It's usually just a rope pulldown -- NASCAR looked into it and found that out of the 1,000+ garages at the tracks they race at, there was only 11 that had knots tied in them, and this was the only one that was fashioned into a noose.

 

I'm curious about your second question as well.  I never did anything where I had to learn any knots but I learned at a relatively young age the symbolism of nooses in this country.  Then I see people saying "a crew member probably got bored at some point, started messing with the pulldown rope, and forgot to untie the noose he made" like it's no big deal.  People tying/displaying nooses in public seems like a big no-no to me.  Am I wrong there?  Is it just nooses where the rope wraps around 13 times or something?

 

So what I was getting at is that if a simple rope pulldown was all that was needed, but some people decided to make nooses, the scene I'm picturing is a bunch of rednecks sitting around thinking it's funny to make a noose... and likely cracking "jokes" about it.  There's simply no way - especially down there - that people didn't know what the noose represents.  It seems to be clear that it wasn't directed towards Wallace specifically, but nooses in Alabama?  LOL, that's not done simply for usability purposes.

[sc49erfan15]

I'm in my 30s and can only think of one single time in my life that I've ever even seen a noose. I was in 8th grade and this kid (who had some behavioral issues), sitting at his desk, started tying a 1' long piece of rope into a noose. I remember thinking it was weird. Dude finished it and started messing with it. I remember the teacher then seeing it and him getting in trouble. 8th grade me associated nooses more with capital punishment and/or suicide than racism, but I remember wondering how the hell he knew how to make a noose.

 

(not so) fun fact: if you Google "how to tie a noose," which I did because I legitimately don't know how difficult it is, a very large phone number to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline comes up. So that's good, I guess.

 

After seeing the photo NASCAR posted, I take back my comments about the crew member looking silly. That's absolutely something I'd at least point out to someone - "uhh, why is a noose there?" ...and given the circumstances surrounding Bubba in the week or so beforehand, I don't think having the FBI investigate was any sort of overreaction whatsoever.

[dont care]

On 6/26/2020 at 8:10 AM, BringBackTheVet said:

 

So what I was getting at is that if a simple rope pulldown was all that was needed, but some people decided to make nooses, the scene I'm picturing is a bunch of rednecks sitting around thinking it's funny to make a noose... and likely cracking "jokes" about it.  There's simply no way - especially down there - that people didn't know what the noose represents.  It seems to be clear that it wasn't directed towards Wallace specifically, but nooses in Alabama?  LOL, that's not done simply for usability purposes.

It is for useable purposes, I personally used that same knot every time I’ve gone fishing, many times on boats, and a handful of times in the army. Reason being is it’s an incredibly strong knot that won’t come undone even when trying to untie it is difficult.

[See Red]

Please take one of Pocono's dates away. This track is just the worst.