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William Alexander Lester III (born February 6, 1961) is an American semi-retired professional racing driver. He last competed part-time in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, driving the No. 17 Ford F-150 for David Gilliland Racing. Lester previously competed full-time in the Truck Series from 2002 to midway through 2007. Lester was the NASCAR's only full-time African-American driver during that time. After that, he moved to sports car racing, competing in the Rolex Sports Car Series from 2007 to 2012. Lester had also competed part-time in the same series from 1998 to 2001.
He also made two NASCAR Cup Series starts in 2006 and one Busch Series (now Xfinity) start in 1999.
Since his retirement from driving, Lester has worked as a member of the NASCAR National Motorsports Appeals Panel.
In 2002, he ran in the Craftsman Truck series full-time for Hamilton. While he did not finish in the top-ten, he had sixteen finishes between eleventh-eighteenth, leading to a seventeenth place points finish and runner-up to Brendan Gaughan for NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Rookie of the Year. The next season, he grabbed his first career pole at Lowe's Motor Speedway and had a tenth-place run at Kansas Speedway, garnering a fourteenth place finish in the championship standings.
He switched over to Bill Davis Racing in 2004. He had a best finish of tenth and finished 22nd in points. In 2005, he won two consecutive poles, and had his first top-five finishes. Lester raced in his first Nextel Cup race in the Golden Corral 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, driving the No. 23 Waste Management Dodge Charger for Davis in 2006. The race was supposed to be run on March 19, but was postponed for a day due to rain. He qualified nineteenth, becoming the first African-American to make a Cup race since 1986, and the sixth in series history. He finished 38th, six laps down. He ran another race that season at Michigan, finishing 32nd. He later DNQed at California after spinning in qualifying.
After failing to finish in the top-ten in 2006, Lester departed Davis to drive the No. 15 Billy Ballew Motorsports Chevy. His best finish was an eighth at Kentucky, when he stepped out of the truck due to sponsor problems. After he was unable to find another ride in NASCAR, he left in 2008 to return to sports car racing.
On February 26, 2021, Lester announced on NASCAR Race Hub that he would be coming out of retirement to compete in the Truck Series race at his home track of Atlanta, which was also the same track where he made his Cup Series debut at in 2006. The team was revealed as David Gilliland Racing on March 12, with local Ford dealerships and Camping World as his sponsors. He finished 36th.
For 2011, Lester moved to the GT category with Autohaus Motorsports and their Chevrolet Camaro team. On May 14, 2011, Lester made sports car history by becoming the first African-American driver to win in any Grand-Am division. Fittingly, Lester won at the Virginia International Raceway, located close to the home of NASCAR's first African-American winner, Wendell Scott.
In 1984, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in EECS from the University of California, Berkeley. Biography of William Alexander Lester III, TheHistorymakers.org, March 10, 2018, Retrieved June 24, 2020 Fresh out of college, he worked at Hewlett-Packard for 15 years before deciding to focus full-time on auto racing. Former NASCAR Driver Discusses Competing as a Black Man, NPR Morning Edition, June 24, 2020, Retrieved June 24, 2020
Lester lives in Windermere, Florida with his wife Cheryl, and their sons William Alexander IV (Alex) and Austin Richard.
He published an autobiography, Winning in Reverse, in February 2021.
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