AFTER a weekend spent stoking division, President Donald Trump went after Nascar’s only black driver yesterday and criticised its decision to ban the Confederate flag at its races and venues.

Exploiting racial tensions, Trump wrongly accused Bubba Wallace of perpetrating “a hoax” after one of his crew members discovered a rope shaped like a noose in a garage stall they had been assigned to.

Federal authorities ruled last month that the rope had been hanging there since at least last October and was not a hate crime. Wallace has maintained the rope had been fashioned into a noose.

“Has [Bubba Wallace] apologised to all of those great Nascar drivers and officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, amd were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another hoax?” Trump tweeted.

“That and flag decision has caused lowest ratings ever!”

The sport’s ratings are actually up.

Wallace, an Alabama native, has worn a shirt saying “I Can’t Breathe,” raced with a Black Lives Matter paint scheme in Virginia and successfully lobbied for Nascar’s Confederate flag ban.

For more than 70 years, the flag was a common and complicated sight at Nascar races.