Lester, William Alexander III

Impact on the world

Became, in 2003, only the second African American driver in NASCAR history to win a pole position, exactly forty years after Wendell Scott, already profiled in this collection, became the first to do so in 1962, qualifying at 175.593 miles per hour for the Hardee's 200 at Lowe's Motor Speedway; he went on to become the first Black driver to compete in NASCAR's Busch Grand National Series, and in 2006 made history again as only the third Black driver ever to start a Cup Series race, the first since Willy T. Ribbs in 1986 and immediately preceding Bubba Wallace, already profiled in this collection; he later became the first African American driver to win a professional sports car race when he claimed victory in the Grand-Am Rolex Series at Virginia International Raceway in 2011, a track located near Wendell Scott's own hometown.

Life & background

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1961 and raised largely in the San Francisco Bay Area after his family relocated to California, Lester earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and computer science from UC Berkeley in 1984, beginning a 15-year career at Hewlett-Packard, first as a software development engineer writing diagnostic code for workstations and servers, then rising to a research and development manager position by 1988; throughout this period he raced as a weekend amateur in Sports Car Club of America regional competitions, winning Rookie of the Year in 1985 and a regional class championship the following year, eventually entering his first professional sports car race in 1989 while still employed full-time at HP. After winning a Championship Auto Racing Teams diversity development program competition, he made an unusual career pivot virtually unheard of in professional racing, leaving Hewlett-Packard at 40 to commit entirely to driving, joining Bobby Hamilton's Dodge-sponsored Craftsman Truck Series team in 2001; his 2003 pole position made him only the second Black driver in NASCAR history to achieve the feat, and that same year he became the first African American driver and first NASCAR truck driver to appear on a cereal box, through a General Mills Honey Nut Cheerios sponsorship deal, while earning the Trailblazer in Motor Sports award from the Rainbow/PUSH organization. He competed in 143 Truck Series starts, two Cup Series starts, and one Xfinity Series start across his NASCAR career, totaling 146 national series starts that ranked second among Black drivers only to Wendell Scott's 495, before transitioning fully to sports car racing, where his 2011 Virginia International Raceway victory made him the first Black driver to win any Grand-Am series race; he later worked as a special projects consultant for NASCAR and as a motorsports broadcast analyst for NBC Sports, briefly returning to truck racing one final time in 2021 at age 60. Reflecting candidly on his career, he has spoken openly about corporate America's continued reluctance to sponsor Black drivers at the highest levels of the sport, calling it a persistent, difficult obstacle to broader diversity in racing even as he remained publicly hopeful that conditions would continue to improve.

Sources

1. Encyclopedia.com; Bill Lester official website and timeline; FOX Sports; Bruce Merrin's Celebrity Speakers