It was almost like fate. Each weekend Bill Lester would check his bags, ride the train inside Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport to the terminal and board his plane. And there, sitting on the same plane flying out to the same town would be Billy Ballew.

If Ballew was headed to Milwaukee, Lester was, too. California, New Hampshire, Texas -- Ballew and Lester might as well have shared their frequent flyer miles as an owner and driver in the Truck Series.

"We never planned anything together, but we usually had the same time window to make a flight and would end up on the same flight," said Ballew, who like Lester lives in Atlanta. "On the long flights to Phoenix and California and Las Vegas, it's a four-hour flight so it's hard to be still. We're racers, so we talk about racing."

Lester would fly out to meet his No. 22 Bill Davis Racing team for that weekend's race. Ballew would do the same for his own Billy Ballew Motorsports No. 15 team

This weekend, they're headed to Daytona. Together.

"We always talked about how it would be great to race with each other," Lester said. "The opportunity was available, and we took it."

After three years with BDR, Lester packed up at the end of last season and is now paired with Ballew for the 2007 Truck Series season. It's a different setting for Lester, and some may wonder why he left what appeared to be not only a stable Truck Series ride, but also a potential opportunity to get to the Nextel Cup Series.

Last season, Lester became the first black driver in 20 years to qualify for a Cup race when he put BDR's No. 23 in the show at Atlanta. He was the fastest of the eight go-or-go-home drivers, qualifying 18th.

"It was extremely relieving," Lester said as he thought back to the memorable night. "To me it was justification and verification that walking away from my prior professional life and leaving it behind was the right thing to do."

That prior professional life was one of white collars and big paychecks. With a degree in electrical engineering and computer science from UC-Berkeley, Lester landed a job at Hewlett-Packard where he worked for 16 years. He dabbled in road-course circuits and spent his weekends racing part time. But memories of his dad taking him to a race when he was 8 years old multiplied, and Lester gave it all up for a shot at full-time racing.

That eventually led to him becoming the first black driver to run a Busch Series race in 1999, and later land a full-time Truck Series ride with Bobby Hamilton Racing and then Bill Davis Racing.

And that took him to Atlanta Motor Speedway last spring.

"I've always aspired to race with the best, and when it came time to race my way in I knocked the ball out of the park, so to speak," Lester said of his Atlanta qualifying run. "Taking the green flag with those guys was something I always wanted to do because that's where it's at."

"In this day in time, for him to go out there in a one-off deal and make the race, he had to have tremendous support," Ballew said. "When you qualify for a Nextel Cup race, you are definitely a racecar driver. And he achieved that."

In the 48 hours between Lester's qualifying for the Atlanta race and the dropping of the green flag, his PR staff said more than 300 stories were written about him by media across the world. Fans and cameras swarmed him.

According to Ardy Arani, president of the Championship Group marketing team that gave Lester a sponsor for the race, so did sponsors.

"There's a couple of full voicemail boxes back at the office," Arani said last year between Atlanta qualifying and the race, referring to potential sponsors for Lester. "All of this is pointing toward 2007 when the game plan is for [Lester] to be a Nextel Cup driver without a second job in the Truck Series."

But the alleged calls from sponsors never got to Lester, who finished 38th after the rain-delayed event was run on Monday.

"I don't know who started those rumors or where they came from, but I was never involved in a discussion like that," Lester said about a spike in sponsor interest.

They never reached team owner Bill Davis, either.

"We didn't have any interest from sponsors on our end," Davis said. "We didn't see the attention fall off [after Atlanta] because it wasn't there."

Three months later, when Lester again qualified for a Cup race at Michigan, the hoopla didn't follow. He finished 32nd and on the lead lap in the rain-shortened event.

In September he went to California but failed to qualify, something Lester admits was terribly disappointing. So when the series returned to Atlanta in October, initial plans had Lester to try one more time. He declined.

"I decided I didn't want to run just to be running," Lester said. "That was my decision."

By then, the three-year marriage between Lester and Bill Davis Racing in the Truck Series was nearing its end.

"It was just time to change the environment," Lester said.

Davis said it was about money.

"We struggled so hard with sponsorship," he said. "We just couldn't get Bill to have the finishes like our other trucks had. Everybody involved, including Bill, gave three hard years of work, but it came down to sponsorship dollars. Waste Management was there, but past that, there weren't any sponsorship dollars."

For Lester, it was a continuation of the same story that plagues every driver trying to catch a break, white or minority, male or female.

"What I need is strong corporate support," he said. "I just want to be on a level playing field, and I haven't been given that yet. I've always been short on one aspect. I've either had funding but been short on manpower. Or I've had the manpower and been short on funding. This is a team sport, and you're only as good as the equipment you're driving. I'd just like to have all the aspects in place for an opportunity."

And that's where he finds himself with Ballew.

"The opportunity came available for me to be the center of attention, and I've never had that with a team before," Lester said. "I've always been on a team as the second or third truck. When you have two or three trucks, it's very difficult to run the truck at the same level as the others. So here, I am the primary focus."

Lester is the only full-time truck at Billy Ballew Motorsports, although Ballew said Kyle Busch will run a second truck in a handful of races. But even being the center of attention makes nothing easier. A week before the season opener at Daytona, Ballew was making rounds in Atlanta talking to potential sponsors for his driver.

It also doesn't extinguish the flame that burns in Lester to drive a Cup car once again, something that has been discussed with Ballew considering his team's partnerships with high-powered Cup organizations, including a long-term relationship with DEI. But for him -- or any black driver -- to drive in NASCAR's premier series, Lester said it will take two things: exposure and opportunity

"You have to be exposed to the sport at an early age, and you have to be given the opportunity to show others your talent," said Lester, who points to NASCAR's Drive for Diversity program as a way to provide those opportunities to young minority drivers.

"Will somebody graduate from the program and make it to the Nextel Cup level? I don't know. That's in the hands of the driver. There's absolutely no way to tell if in five, 10 or 15 years that an African-American driver will be in the Nextel Cup Series. There's no way to predict that. At least, I don't know of one."

Once again, Davis said the crystal ball shows dollar signs.

"The obvious answer is sponsorship," he said. "What it will take for Corporate America to identify a black driver who can go do it on the track as well as the marketing side of things, who knows? It baffles me to think that Bill is not that guy."