This year, he’s racing for the Chevy Silverado team owned by Billy Ballew in place of his former ride with Bill Davis Racing, which had three Tundra entries. “I’m the center of attention on a single truck team and I really enjoy the fact all the resources are focused on me,” said Lester of the Ballew squad, which has scored five career truck victories in 12 previous seasons.

People often perceive that Lester made it to the Nextel Cup because he’s black — not in spite of this fact given the sport’s history. And, of course, critics can now point to Hamilton as an example of talent in the form of victories in the lower echelons paving the path to the top, adding some comfort to those who would judge Lester strictly on cut-and-dried criteria.

In NASCAR, large fields have long since competed under the American dream method of making it any way you can. That’s a long way from the Grand Prix races in F-1, where select teams enter cars of their own construction — as it was in the early days when they regularly raced before royalty or, occasionally, in front of ruling despots. So there’s your irony. There’s nothing democratic about Hamilton’s rise to the top of a sport hidebound by European hierarchal values. More power to the young Brit, who took advantage of the entry level single seater series that flourish in Europe, which support any driver who proves to be bloody quick, including Germans, French, Italians, Spanish and Japanese. (It’s about countries, teams and manufacturers, not indviduals, see.)

More than a dreamscape, NASCAR is also a meritocracy. But it’s far more American due to its emphasis on individual showmanship versus sport, the quantity of entries on the big ovals, the number of top level series and the equality brought on by more easily built — or bought — equipment. That’s how the dreamers and longshots, the unlikely’s and the diehards find their way in. With apologies to its rural roots, NASCAR has always been a racing version of Times Square.

Needless to say, Lester is hardly sitting on the sidelines waiting for opportunity to strike, hence his deal with fellow Atlantan Ballew. But he remains surprised that his media exposure last year did not result in an opportunity this year. “We generated $30 million in actual sponsor value through news stories,” said Lester, who is the same engaging, articulate and well-informed driver as when I first met him as he struggled to find rides in sports car racing early in his full-time pro career. “You would think a company wanting to get exposure would take advantage of what I have to offer,” he said.

Now 46, Lester chose to leave the Toyota team and a second-string crew at Bill Davis Racing, because “it got to be a stalemate.” In other words, each side decided a best effort had been made without the expected results of a victory, a typical racing story.

Along these lines, there’s another direct comparison. Tiger Woods has received in his own bank account well in excess of $30 million in sponsor deals as a black player in the traditionally white world of American golf. So it comes down to that winning thing, although one wonders if Woods would have been trying to fight his way into the Masters without Lee Elder or Charlie Siffert having come before him. Or, if the price of entry had been more than the cost of a set of golf clubs and the willingness to play public courses versus the expensive prospects of motor racing.

If winning is the thing, would a victory in the Truck Series hasten Lester’s ambitions to move to the Nextel Cup? “There have been a lot of drivers who have run in the truck series without winning a race who have gone on to the Nextel Cup,” said Lester. (Five, in fact, competed this weekend in Atlanta: Denny Hamlin, Jamie McMurray, Johnny Sauter, David Ragan and Scott Riggs.)

Nobody would argue the fact Lester first landed a Dodge ride and then a Toyota deal in the Truck Series with Bill Davis Racing due to corporate efforts to comply with NASCAR’s goals to generate more diversity in its ranks. But just like last year’s rookie sensation Hamlin, whose father refinanced the family’s home to keep his son in contention for a professional career, Lester had mortgaged his promising future as a high-tech engineer to go racing full-time long before the factory deals materialized. And, he rewarded Toyota’s decision by winning three poles and leading laps in several races. Lester may well have sold more than a few Tundras in the process.

So there’s the American criteria — can you make the field, do you have a story to tell about sacrifice and effort against long odds, and can you represent the product well once the attention is focused on you? According to people who should know, $15 million in media exposure is a pretty good standard for a NASCAR investment. Last year, Lester doubled that figure with a story line that has at least as much Horatio Alger as the stories of any of the young guns who recently arrived with NASCAR dads riding shotgun.

Looking at some samples from the years I’ve spent covering NASCAR, in the same time-honored way that Nashville singer Marty Robbins, bon vivant Delma Cowart, perennial independent Jimmy Means, longshot Carl Long or any number of drivers who worked their way into NASCAR’s top series, Lester brings a unique perspective to the sport. But unlike them, he can expand its horizons just by racing. A guy named Jody Ridley, to take another example, was never touted to win a race, but brought home the only trophy team owner Junie Donlavey ever won. The same was true for upstart winners Bobby Hillin Jr. or Ron Bouchard. So it does happen.

I write this only because NASCAR participants — and fans — can ill afford to miss an opportunity to expand beyond the boundaries of the white working class version of the American dream that has sustained it all these years. Otherwise, this form or racing risks becoming a caricature as the older fans inevitably fade and the American marketplace continues on its increasingly multi-cultural course.

Montoya’s hasty retreat from F1 to the Dodges of his former Indy car owner Chip Ganassi is a windfall, which will now demonstrate what a Latino dimension can do for NASCAR. But to imagine a driver like Hamilton making a similar shift would indeed be a pipe dream. Black drivers will materialize in NASCAR only from within.

With palpable confidence and demonstrated talent, if Lester locates a sponsor that can leverage his value his presence alone in the Nextel Cup will make it more likely that young blacks will aspire to the same opportunity. That will help create the same sort of support enjoyed by Montoya and Hamilton in their respective cultures as young men.

It hasn’t happened that way very often in America for blacks who would race, for whom the roads in the lower echelons have been riddled with potholes. Like baseball, which has benefited immensely from diversity that now includes Korean and Japanese players as well as blacks and Latinos, stock car racing once had its equivalent of the Negro leagues that operated in various parts of the country in a variety of equipment. Eventually, Wendell Scott, Charlie Scott (no relation), Willy T. Ribbs and now Lester all managed to work their way into NASCAR’s premier league, an incredibly small sample given the number of races and the length of entry lists.

The barriers have always been high in motor racing in general and, given the statistics, even higher for blacks in America. That means it takes more work to get in for black drivers, not the other way around. Lester might testify — if he wasn’t so highly focused on generating another opportunity to get back behind the wheel of a Nextel Cup entry.

Jonathan Ingram can be reached at jingram666@cs.com.