NASCAR releases photo of rope found in Bubba Wallace's garage -- and it looks just like a noose

NASCAR on Thursday released a photo of the rope that was found in driver Bubba Wallace's garage earlier this week -- and it looks just like a noose.

Fox Sports reporter Alan Cavanna posted a photo of the rope, which the FBI concluded was a standard garage door pull on his Twitter account.

Additionally, as reported by ESPN's Marty Smith, NASCAR president Steve Phelps revealed on Thursday that after conducting a "thorough sweep of all 29 tracks where they race, and 1684 garage stalls, they found only 11 total ropes that had a pulldown rope tied in a knot, and just one noose: The one in Bubba Wallace's garage."

Despite this, however, Phelps said it was still impossible to determine with total certainty whether the noose was left there intentionally for Wallace.

"We pointed towards an alleged hate crime," he said. "For it to be coincidental, it's difficult."

FBI officials earlier this week concluded that there was no evidence that the noose had been placed in an attempt to threaten Wallace, and the Department of Justice claimed that "the noose that was in [Wallace's garage] was in that garage as early as October 2019.