Before Bubba Wallace, Bill Lester blazed trails for minorities as Black NASCAR driver

While 39 current NASCAR Cup drivers have supported Bubba Wallace’s fight against racism, none have walked in his race shoes.

Bill Lester did. He was the Bubba Wallace of the 2000s.

Lester, like Wallace, seethed at seeing Confederate flags at NASCAR tracks, and he often felt isolated as the only full-time Black driver in the sport.

In fact, as a youngster in Northern California, Lester was so horrified by the sight of the flags on NASCAR television coverage in the late 1970s that he began his career in road racing and open-wheel competition instead of stock cars.

“I didn’t look at it as a welcoming environment,” he said of his first glimpses of NASCAR. “To see all those flags fly so proudly in the breeze was a turnoff to me.”

Eventually, Lester, 38 at the time, tried his hand in NASCAR, first in a 1999 Busch (now Xfinity) race at Watkins Glen, when he became the first Black driver in the history of the series. He then spent seven winless years competing for low-budget teams in the NASCAR trucks series and scored a career-best fifth from the pole in 2005 at Kansas Speedway, site of the July 23-25 NASCAR races.

Though Lester reached the Cup level in 2006, he made just two starts for an underfunded team before returning to sports car and road racing.

The struggle continues

From a distance, Lester has been heartened by the stance Wallace has taken in the sport’s movement toward racial equality, including convincing NASCAR to ban Confederate flags at tracks.

But he still hasn’t seen much progress for Black drivers since the days of his struggling to find the millions of dollars in sponsorships necessary to win.

Wallace, driving for underfunded teams throughout his career, has failed to win a Cup race in 93 starts and was winless in 85 Xfinity races, though he won six times in the trucks series.

“Bubba is in the same scenario,” Lester, 59, said from his home in Atlanta. “He’s underfunded, just like I was. You see some great sponsors on some of his cars, but you see other times when it’s Richard Petty Motorsports or Victory Junction on the car, or whatever to make it look right, but it isn’t. “

Wallace last week received a commitment for primary sponsorship from Cash App, a consumer finance service, for five races this year, including the fall Kansas race, but it’s still a long way from a full season of funding.

“The playing field hasn’t been level,” Lester said. “It’s like racing with one hand tied behind our back. We’re grateful to be out there, but give us the same opportunity to get the funding necessary that these other drivers enjoy. We don’t have the same access to capital. Those in corporate America making those decisions have not embraced drivers who are not mainstream.”

Wallace sported Black Lives Matter on his unsponsored No. 43 Chevrolet car at Martinsville last month, six days after he took his stand against the Confederate flag. Lester is not sure NASCAR would have banned the flag had he made the request 15 years ago.

“I was proud of the fact NASCAR banned the flag,” Lester said. “It was high time. It should have been done a long time ago, but the timing wasn’t right when I was on the scene. The ears were not open or would have entertained that idea.

“With what’s gone on lately in this era, the timing was right. Bubba took advantage of an opportunity, which I’m proud he did. NASCAR was receptive and made the move that they did.”

Two weeks after the ban of the flag, a noose was found in Wallace’s garage stall at Talladega, though it was later determined the noose was not directed toward Wallace, specifically.

Lester nonetheless still questions the motives of someone at Talladega.

“It wasn’t racially targeted to Bubba, but it was racially motivated because there’s no need for a noose on a garage-door pulldown,” Lester said. “It was a black eye for Talladega Speedway. In the time they had it since last October, somebody should have brought it down, somebody should have brought it to the attention of the maintenance staff, or whoever was responsible for maintaining the garage area should have had it removed.

“It’s an indication to me that the staff there was well aware of it, and thought it was cute to keep it there, which is really unfortunate and pathetic.”

Lester has exchanged texts with Wallace recently, saying, “I’ve praised what he’s been doing. I told him if he needs me, let me know. I think he’s surrounded with a pretty good support system. We’ve talked on occasion prior to this set of events. But he’s pretty much a generation removed from me. “

Muted raciscm

During his eight-year NASCAR career, Lester said he encountered some uneasy situations because of his race, though most drivers treated him with respect.

“At a number of race tracks I was made to feel uncomfortable,” Lester said. “I’ve seen conversations stopped and seen fingers point at me, and I’ve heard the N-word mumbled under peoples’ breath but loud enough for me to hear it. But I haven’t had anything overt, where anybody right in front of you (had) a Confederate flag or said the N-word to my face.

“But I have been made to feel uncomfortable because I am different. I’m an anomaly in NASCAR, even to this day. Until that changes — and the (ban of) the flag is a good first step — the hue in the stands is not going to change all that much. If it becomes a welcoming environment, things will change, and the composition of the fan will change.”

And, perhaps, more opportunities for minority drivers will be the result. Chase Austin, a young Black driver from Eudora, Kansas, made six Xfinity and three trucks starts during 2007-10, but his career never found any traction, largely because of a lack of funding.

“I remember Chase,” Lester said. “He’s on the sidelines. He’s an example of a lot of stories that are similar of young Black drivers who want to get in the sport, but don’t have the financial support to be able to do so.”

Milestone at Kansas

The high point of Lester’s NASCAR career came in the trucks series at Kansas Speedway in 2005, where he won the pole in a then-record 177.633 mph.

Lester recorded two of his three career top-10 finishes in the heat of Kansas before lights were installed at the track and the trucks series took to night racing.

“I have good memories, and not so good memories of Kansas because of how darn hot it was every time we raced there,” Lester laughed. “I had a pole position and some good finishes, and also had a second-degree burn on my rear end because of an exhaust leak right underneath my seat, and it was the most painful thing I almost ever experienced.”

Lester, now retired from a research and development managerial position with Hewlett-Packard in California, is documenting his auto-racing odyssey in a memoir due for release next year titled “Winning in Reverse.”

“It’s the story about how I was able to live my dream of becoming a professional race car driver despite the obstacles and the odds,” he said. “I identified eight keys to success, called ‘My Winning Wheel of Success’ that allowed me to make it when, by all accounts, I shouldn’t have.

“It’s called ‘Winning in Reverse’ because I didn’t get the benefit of driving karts (early) which is something every driver typically starts out doing, but my last competitive racing in 2012 was representing Team USA in an international karting competition in Portugal. So, it’s a story of how I did everything opposite and made it.”