NASCAR driver Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr. competed in the NASCAR Cup Series race Wednesday at Martinsville Speedway in an unprecedented paint scheme. His No. 43 Richard Petty Motorsports Chevrolet had a #BlackLivesMatter paint scheme in the mid-week race, which started only hours after NASCAR banned the Confederate flag at all its events.
When the team announced the special paint scheme Tuesday, Wallace — the only African American driver in the Cup Series — explained how the paint scheme came to be. Inspired by last week’s Blackout Tuesday, the team approached Wallace with the idea of a blackout car, which he said he thought would be “incredible.” Unexpectedly, it also helped that Richard Petty Motorsports hadn’t sold sponsorship for this race.
Wallace explained that they had more discussions about what that could include and wanted a foundation or charity that addressed racial inequality. He said:
“Why not dive straight to the root and putting #BlackLivesMatter on the car? Most powerful hashtag going around, I feel like, especially these last couple days, last couple months really.
“And it’s true: Black lives do matter. It’s not that we’re saying, ‘No other lives matter.’ We’re trying to say, ‘Black lives matter, too.’ If we put ‘t-o-o’ on the end, I think a lot more people would understand it. We want to be treated equally and not judged off our skin color and the actions that we get to ensure are based off of our skin color. It’s different, so that’s what we’re trying to get across.
“We want to be a part of this nation as one and come together as one. But we always say, ‘All lives will not matter until black lives matter.’”
Here are 10 photos of Wallace’s No. 43 #BlackLivesMatter Chevrolet from Wednesday night’s Martinsville race. He finished 11th, his best performance at the short track.