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Bill Lester takes EECS career down the horsepower path
His father took him to his first auto race at Laguna Seca Raceway when he was eight years old. Something told Bill Lester (B.S.’84 EECS) even then that he was destined to become a speed demon.
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Bill Lester (B.S.’84 EECS) left Hewlett-Packard in 1998 to pursue his lifelong dream of professional auto racing. After five full seasons with NASCAR’s Craftsman Truck Series, he qualified for the Nextel Cup earlier this year, driving the No. 23 Bill Davis Racing Team Dodge in three starts. Now working to secure $15 million in sponsorships, he hopes to drive full time in next year’s NASCAR Nextel Cup circuit. “My story is one of perseverance and persistence,” he says, “overcoming obstacles and not letting anything derail me from my path.”
PHOTOS COURTESY CHAMPIONSHIP GROUP
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“It was intoxicating. The sound and the speed left an overwhelming impression on me, and I never got over it,” he says. “I had a passion for racing and I wasn’t happy doing anything else.”
In 1998 Lester left a 15-year career and six-figure salary as a software engineer and project manager at Hewlett-Packard to pursue that eight-year-old boy’s vision of himself in the driver’s seat. Until then he had spent years being a weekend road warrior, racing part-time in amateur events and picking up rides wherever he could find them. His wife Cheryl finally insisted that he quit the day job and go after his lifelong dream.
“At Hewlett-Packard I was on the career fast track, managing 24 engineers and making a good paycheck,” Lester says. “But I wasn’t successful by my own definition.” He finally earned a full-time slot in the Craftsman Truck circuit in 2002 and, last March, qualified for the Nextel Cup, becoming the first African American in 20 years to race in NASCAR’s most prestigious event.
At 45, an age when most drivers are retiring, Lester is just entering the top echelon of auto racing. It is a demanding sport, a high-risk ride at speeds nearing 200 miles per hour. On top of racing 36 weekends a year—every race in a different city—these athletes drive hard even off the racetrack, hustling for the $15 million in sponsorships needed to support them for one season.
“It’s insane,” Lester says. “You really have to love what you’re doing because the travel alone would flat wear you out.” The day-to-day reality of auto racing is like a roller-coaster ride, he says, with endless pressure and a constant awareness that outcomes are determined by much more than the driver’s skill.
“Racing is the epitome of the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. You are graded every weekend, and you can have the best weekend of your life one week and the worst weekend the next. You’re relying on your pit crew and controlling only one car out of a whole field.” Currently ranked 56th of 65 teams in the Nextel Cup circuit, Lester has yet to win a NASCAR race. He says that is his next goal.
Now one of the fastest-growing sports in the United States, NASCAR (the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) boasts a huge fan base and growing numbers of supporters across a wide demographic spectrum, including women, white-collar professionals, blacks and Hispanics. Organizers are actively cultivating more diversity, not just among fans, but also among drivers and crew. But that’s not why Lester got involved.
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“It is an opportunity for me to expand minority involvement in the sport,” he says, “but I didn’t get into it to be a torchbearer. I want to be respected for my achievement.” Just as at Hewlett-Packard, where he was often the only African American in boardrooms, and at Berkeley, where he doesn’t remember any other black engineering students graduating with him, he is NASCAR’s only black driver. He is also NASCAR’s only driver who has a Berkeley Engineering degree.
“Most of the guys I’m racing with barely finished high school,” he says. “My engineering foundation gives me a leg up on the competition, especially as racing becomes more theoretical and computers have a bigger role. I can work directly with my engineers and view the data with a problem-solving mindset.”
First exposed to computers by his father, William Lester Jr., a theoretical chemist at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Lester says engineering was a good fit for him. But he always regarded it as a way to subsidize his love of driving and, if the driving career didn’t come through, something to fall back on. In fact, when he got his first paycheck from Hewlett-Packard in 1984, he spent it on the down payment for his first race car.
“I had a great experience with engineering and working for Hewlett-Packard,” Lester says. “They gave me the freedom to pursue my other interests. But my calling was a different one.”
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