A spokesman for North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday condemned a racist Facebook post from the owner of a race track in the state.
Mike Fulp, who owns 311 Speedway in Pine Hall, N.C., advertised a "Bubba Rope" for sale on Facebook Marketplace. The listing was posted Wednesday and removed Thursday, according to The Associated Press. It included the description, "Buy your Bubba Rope today for only $9.99 each, they come with a lifetime warranty and work great."
The "Bubba Rope" is a reference to the noose a Richard Petty Motorsports team member found in Bubba Wallace's garage stall at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday. Both NASCAR and the FBI investigated the matter and determined no hate crime had been committed against Wallace because the noose had been in place since October 2019.
MORE: NASCAR explains its noose investigation
Fulp's post was criticized in the comments section before it was removed.
"This incident of racism is horrific and shameful,'' said Ford Porter, the governor's deputy communications director, via the Winston-Salem Journal. "North Carolina is better than this.''
311 Speedway is a half-mile dirt track located just off highway 311 in the north-central portion of the state.
The Journal reported Saturday that 311 Speedway had lost a couple partnerships in the wake of Fulp's post — one from a concrete company and the other from a driver series.
NASCAR said the investigation into the noose found in Wallace's garage stall revealed that it was placed at some point during its 2019 Talladega race weekend. Troubled by the fact that it was not alerted of the noose's presence earlier, NASCAR is implementing industry-wide sensitivity and unconscious bias training and installing additional cameras in garages at its tracks.
"NASCAR conducted a thorough sweep of all the garage areas across the tracks where we race," NASCAR president Steve Phelps said Thursday. "So across those 29 tracks, and 1,684 garage stalls, we found only 11 total that had a pull-down rope tied into a knot.
"And only one noose — the one discovered Sunday in Bubba Wallace’s garage."
MORE: All the facts of the Bubba Wallace noose case
NASCAR has released a clear photo of the noose found in Bubba Wallace's garage stall.https://t.co/DdkCWRvrA1
— Sporting News (@sportingnews) June 25, 2020
Wallace, 26 and the only Black driver in NASCAR's three national series, has been taking heat for what was a misunderstanding on the part of his own Richard Petty Motorsports race team and NASCAR.
"You get backlash every day," Wallace said Tuesday night on CNN hours after the FBI and NASCAR announced the findings of their investigation. "I'm used to it. It stings a little bit worse when they're trying to test your character."
Amid global protests of racial injustice, Wallace a few weeks ago led a group of drivers who pushed to have NASCAR ban the Confederate flag from tracks. NASCAR on June 10 did just that, announcing it would no longer allow the display of the flag at any of its events or properties.