Lester impresses in Indy Lights test

Lester completed 148 laps (185 miles) around the 1.25-mile Firebird East road course, setting a fastest time of 53.29s.

Despite not beating Jonny Kane's times - Team KOOL Green's regular Indy Lights driver - Lester was pleased with his performance on Wednesday.

'I got adjusted to the car very quickly this morning, then my times kind of leveled off,' said Lester.

'After that is was just a matter of working on a couple of key areas around the track, which is what we worked on most of the day.

'It's just going to take more experience. But overall, I'm very pleased with how I did.

'I just hope this opens the door to more opportunities. Needless to say, I'd love a ride in a CART series. But it's kind of out of my hands.

'All I can do is put my best foot forward and hope that I continue to be blessed. It's been a very long and trying road to get to this point.'

TKG Indy Lights team manager, Lou Schollum praised Lester's drive and said that his fitness level had enabled him to complete more laps than the 90 the team had initially planned.

He said, 'For a guy who had started this morning having only driven an open-wheel car (Atlantic) for half a day, Bill did an extremely good job.

'He settled into the car this morning and got comfortable, then just went faster and faster all day. He made good use of new tires when we gave them to him and he made very few mistakes.'

Lester earned the right to test with the TKG Indy Lights team after he demonstrated significant ability during a similar on-track evaluation with the PPI Toyota Atlantic team in late October.

CART's African-American Driver Development Program is designed to create opportunities to identify African-American race car drivers who may have the potential to climb the ladder of development in CART's three open-wheel racing series.