CupScene.com

(By NASCAR Wire Service)

Posted: Thursday,June 30th, 2011

A Red Bull Racing crewman was fired for an anti-gay tweet he posted Sunday night following the Sprint Cup race at Infineon Raceway.

Prior to flying out of San Francisco on Sunday night, Jeremy Fuller, a contract employee and tire changer, posted on Twitter a photo of a gay pride banner on a car with the comment, “This is way (sic) I don’t live here!”

One of his Twitter followers responded with a tweet that read, “if we could get rid of them, it’d be a lot better.”

It appeared that Fuller later replied to that tweet, but did not retweet the original message. The response read: “lol.. Don’t we all wish!”

Fuller said Tuesday night that his initial tweet was meant as a joke to another crew member. He said he never posted that response and was on a plane when that appeared on his Twitter account. He took down the posts Monday morning, and Fuller said Tuesday night that he had been fired by Red Bull Racing and by Turner Motorsports, where he also worked a few races as a tire changer in the Nationwide Series.

AVONDALE, AZ - FEBRUARY 27: Crew members work on the car of Brian Vickers, driver of the #83 Red Bull Toyota, after crashing during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Subway Fresh Fit 500 at Phoenix International Raceway on February 27, 2011 in Avondale, Arizona. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)

“It was a joke between two friends and it cost me both of my jobs,” Fuller said. “I’m not racist and I do not hate gay people. It wasn’t intended to be what (it appeared). … I didn’t write anything about getting rid of them or ‘ha ha,’ or ‘laughing out loud.’”

In response to questions about the tweets, Red Bull issued a statement Tuesday night stating that a member of its team had been fired.

“Red Bull Racing Team was made aware of comments posted to a contractor’s Twitter account following this weekend’s race,” the statement said. “After investigating the matter, Red Bull Racing Team terminated the contractor’s employment effective immediately.

“The race team regularly conducts diversity training and strictly enforces our team policies against any form of discrimination. We have zero tolerance for such violations and in no way support any of the comments posted by this individual.”

NASCAR’s rulebook includes a short Code of Conduct paragraph, with Rule 7-5 saying: “A NASCAR Member shall not make or cause to be made a public statement and/or communication that criticizes, ridicules, or otherwise disparages another person based upon that person’s race, color, creed, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, religion, age, or handicapping condition.”

Fuller stressed that he did not hate gay people and did not mean for the tweet, which he said was designed to only go to one other person, to be taken that way.

“I don’t have any negative thoughts about gay people,” Fuller said. “I got rid of everything because I did not want it to go this far. … I’ve got gay friends. It was like, ‘Hey, look, this (banner) is something you don’t (typically) see. It’s like, ‘Wow, let’s post this.’”

Michael Myers, who runs the website Queers4Gears.com and has covered the sport for the last couple of years, said he got about 30 comments about Fuller’s tweets.

Myers, who wrote about the issue Tuesday afternoon, said that about 10 minutes before he saw the tweet, he did an interview saying he had never experienced any anti-gay bias in the garage.

“My first unfortunate negative story went up today,” Myers said. “That was kind of sad to have to post that. … I don’t want his actions to reflect on NASCAR.

“I really have been blown away how easily this has gone for me and how everyone has accepted me in the sport. I’ve had nothing negative at all until this one time.”

Myers, an accredited member of the NASCAR media and whose website has been profiled in The New York Times, does not use his website as a political platform. He mainly writes articles about NASCAR races and hopes his site helps address misconceptions in the gay community about NASCAR, and vice versa.

He said he was not advocating Fuller be fired but he had to write about it.

“I couldn’t overlook this one,” Myers said. “If it had just been the sign, I probably would have let that go. But it was the agreement and retweeting … of the statement that we should get rid of them all.”

Fuller reiterated several times Tuesday night that he did not write that, and that the person who originally wrote to him about getting rid of gay people no longer exists on Twitter.

“The only thing I posted was the picture and this was the reason I don’t live here,” Fuller said. “That is the only thing I’ve done and I don’t know how it got to be where it’s at now.”