GO SPEED RACER: Bill Lester played it safe with a career in engineering so that he could race in his spare time. After building experience and racking up titles, Lester left engineering to race full time.

Alum’s speedy career was long and slow to build

When Bill Lester was chosen to drive full time in a NASCAR national touring series, his biggest dream came true. But his path to that dream has been very different from that of most of the drivers he competes against.

Lester, the son of Berkeley chemistry professor William Lester, earned his bachelor’s in EECS from Berkeley in 1984. After graduation he worked for Hewlett-Packard for 16 years, the first four of those as an engineer and the next 12 as a project manager. He raced only during the weekends.

“The engineering degree was a means to an end. I wanted to race and Berkeley offered me the education I needed to get a job that would pay for my racing. Also I thought that if the racing didn’t work out, I would have a solid career to fall back on,” he says.

Racing did work out for Lester, who was named rookie of the year for the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Northern California region in 1985. In 1986 he won the SCCA Northern California Road Racing Championship. He quit his high-tech job a few years ago to become a full-time driver for NASCAR, racing in the Craftsman Truck series.

“My Berkeley degree really helped in my racing career. It taught me to think logically, which is great because racing is a very technologically based sport. We use computers to help maximize the performance of our trucks. My degree helps me analyze data and figure out why we get the results we get,” he adds.

Lester’s love of racing began when his father took him to his first auto race at age eight. At 16 his obsession with speed manifested itself fully. He felt he was destined to drive more than 190 miles per hour for a living.

Along the way, however, there were many speed bumps, but they never managed to slow him down. Currently Lester is the only African American driver in a NASCAR national touring series. While working to get onto the circuit he had few role models like himself to look to.

“When I went to a race in the mid-90’s, I was very much an anomaly. Conversations stopped. Fingers pointed,” remembers Lester.

However, issues of being the one and only didn’t faze Lester after completing his Berkeley degree.

“I have always been the only one in many of the things I did in life. I think I was the only African American to graduate in EECS my year. At Hewlett Packard I was often the only person of color in the room at meetings. Racing is no different,” says Lester.

Being a front-runner is a comfortable position for Lester. Everywhere he’s gone he has opened doors for others to follow.

Lester fondly remembers the sense of accomplishment he felt after finishing Berkeley’s tough engineering curriculum. Despite his daily routine of driving at breakneck speeds and the risk of life-threatening wipeouts, Lester says that one of the hardest things he’s ever done was graduate from Berkeley Engineering. “It was extremely competitive,” he laughs.

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