Well, he did this to himself.
All he really needed to do was to shut up, continue to not win races and he still would have gone to the NASCAR Hall of Fame for no reason other than his race.
Even if he'd legitimately found a noose in his driver's seat, a real one made of scratchy hemp the correct move would have been to shut up about it, throw the fucking thing away and move on.
Instead he had to try and Smollett himself into being the next Kaepernick. The next mediocre half-black athlete to try to transition his career into activism because he sucked at his sport.
Did he not think for a second that his entire career, and all of his popularity was due to his race and as a symbol of racial unity in sports? There's nothing else interesting about the guy, he doesn't win, he isn't a flashy driver, he doesn't have an interesting personality and everything has basically been gifted to him and he had to throw all that goodwill away by lobbying NASCAR to ban the Confederate Flag at events and then participating in a race hoax.
He threw it all away and for what? NASCAR fans have every reason in the world to hate him.