CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The one thing NASCAR has always gotten right is its ability to keep the wheels turning.
That has never been in doubt, at least not since 2001 when Dale Earnhardt died in a crash on the last lap of the Daytona 500.
The determination to race has been NASCAR’s greatest strength in the most tumultuous of times, and that certainly includes the past several weeks.
A garage-door pulldown rope fashioned as a noose was found in the garage stall of Bubba Wallace at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. The FBI determined it had been there since last October, and Wallace — who two weeks earlier helped prod NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag at its races — was not the target of a hate crime.