After a string of insensitive tweets Sunday night, in the wake of the news that a noose was found in Bubba Wallace’s No. 43 team garage stall, Brandonbilt Motorsports’ driver Brandon Brown announced on Twitter that his team is working on replacing their gas man Hunter Bullins.
Bullins is part of the No. 68 NASCAR Xfinity Series team through a third party organization, but Brown is doing everything in his power to no longer be associated with Bullins. Here is the full statement from Brown:
— Brandon Brown (@brandonbrown_68) June 22, 2020
It appears that Bullins, since the events of Sunday night, has deleted his Twitter account, but here is a screenshot of one of the questionable Tweets that led to BMS wanting to disassociate with Bullins:
Not only was this Tweet insensitive, as well as the several others that followed, but the fact of the matter that racism has been a topic that NASCAR has been criticized for over the years.
NASCAR Hall of Famer, Wendell Scott is the only African-American driver to win a race, a feat he achieved in the 1964 Jacksonville 200. However, after crossing the line to take the win by a margin of victory of two laps, NASCAR instead awarded the win to Buck Baker, who actually finished second.
After the entire crowd left for the evening, believing Baker had won the race, NASCAR finally told Scott that he was the true winner of the race. Neither Scott, nor his family have ever received the official winner’s trophy from that race.
There is also an incident that occurred in the garage at New Hampshire in 1999, where two white crew members dressed as members of the KKK and used racial slurs toward a black crewman on Jeremy Mayfield’s team at the time.
To read about that incident, click here.
These are just two of the many incidents over the years that caused NASCAR to gain the stigma of being a racist sport. Luckily, the sanctioning body has been taking steps in recent years to reverse the image.
Following his set of Tweets, many questioned if Bullins, who in his Twitter bio states he is a gas man in all three of NASCAR’s National Series, was at Talladega Superspedway. NASCAR Team Rosters for the weekend indicate that Bullins was not one of the team members at the track on Sunday.
Following Brown’s statement, a Twitter user named Zachary Weatherwax has come forward to shed light on a private message conversation he had with Bullins on Facebook in July of 2019. In that conversation, Bullins used a homophobic slur to describe Weatherwax.
https://twitter.com/zdoginterprise/status/1275056688320729089?s=20
UPDATE: Following the publishing of this story, Bullins, who had been employed by the third party pit crew company Elevated Performance, was found to be in violation of his employer’s zero-tolerance policy on racism and has been fired. Elevated performance made the announcement through a statement:
https://twitter.com/elevate2perform/status/1275155200492306438?s=21
One Response
Ill never support nascar again