Barreling Barrister : Pratt Steps From a Courtroom to a Formula Car, Revs Up and Rediscovers the Thrills of His Youth

William Pratt, attorney at law, felt the perspiration running freely over his body. His expensive suit was soaked with sweat. He was just seconds away from making the most important opening statement of his life before the most critical jury he had ever encountered.

If he was successful, he would feel as though he had conquered the world. If he was unsuccessful, he might have to be carted away in an ambulance.

The statement that Pratt planned to make was something like this: You will not get to that turn before I do. I will keep my foot firmly upon the gas pedal and I will not back down. My car will be on your car like fur on a weasel. And if we both crash and die, so be it.

This, of course, is not the type of opening statement made by a typical lawyer in a courtroom. Pratt, however, is not a typical lawyer. And he was not in a courtroom.

He was heading into Turn 5 at the Willow Springs International Raceway in the Mojave Desert, strapped into a small car that was hurtling towards a sharp turn at 90 m.p.h., belching smoke and fire.

The expensive suit Pratt was wearing was not the traditional attorney garb, either. This tailored beauty was fireproof, for one thing, and had a Pennzoil patch sewn over one breast and one that read, “Earl’s Racing Equipment” over the other.

And attorneys don’t regularly wear long underwear, fireproof booties and helmets into court.

And the jury who would judge his performance did not sit meekly in a jury box. They stood in the grandstands and bellowed, trying to be heard above the deafening roar of automobile engines gone mad.

On most days, Pratt toils long hours in his downtown law office, preparing suits and countersuits and settlements between angry people. But since early in 1988, Pratt has left his legal briefcases stashed in his office on many Friday nights and headed for a race track, where he exchanges his Brooks Brothers suit for one that offers a bit more protection.

“You’ve got to do everything you can to make sure you don’t get turned into a crispy critter out on the track,” said Pratt, 41, who lives in Northridge.

Pratt’s interest in driving automobiles at fairly ridiculous speeds began early, at the age of 16. He said he did his best to turn the streets of Joliet, Ill., into pavement that was best crossed quickly by pedestrians.

“I believe I was a real, legitimate danger to the community,” he said. “Back then I believed every corner was designed to be negotiated at a very high rate of speed, that there wasn’t much of a reason to go around a corner if you didn’t slide all four tires through it and leave some marks behind on the road.”

He drove in a few real races with midget cars, but soon college beckoned and then law school and the teen-age exuberance and thrill-seeking life of Rushing Roulette was tucked away.

He established his law office in Los Angeles and went about the rather dreary business of dividing the goodies in marriages gone bad, collecting lost wages for workers injured in accidents and basically doing his part to make sure the judicial system didn’t develop much free time.

Good work if you can get it. But this did not exactly provide that kind of chased-by-a-crazed-grizzly-bear kind of excitement he had loved as a young boy.

In 1978, he ventured to the Ontario Motor Speedway with a friend, and instantly realized that his adrenal gland had not withered and died. It had just been resting.

“It all came back to me, the rush of excitement, as soon as I saw the stock cars racing,” Pratt said. “We had a chance to walk through the pits before the race and I got to sit in Al Unser’s car. By the time the racing began, all I could do was sit there and wonder, ‘How do I get started?’ ”

There was no answer to his question, and he said he gave up the idea soon thereafter, burying himself once again in his expanding law practice.

Nine years later, however, the dream returned. He accompanied a racing friend to the Willow Springs track in Rosamond, outside of Lancaster, and was asked if he’d like to drive a car around the track a few times. Before you could say, “faulty head gasket,” Pratt was diving into a fireproof suit and climbing into the car.

“During the first lap, as soon as I felt the G-forces pulling at me and felt that same wild sense of speed, I thought to myself, ‘This might not be too smart,’ ” Pratt recalled. “But after that first lap, my apprehension disappeared. And I was hooked.”

Pratt enrolled in a race-driving school and early in 1988, he obtained his racing license from the Sports Car Club of America. He immediately purchased a Formula Ford racing car, an open-wheel vehicle with a maximum speed of about 150 m.p.h. He competed several times during the year in amateur races. He finished no better than seventh--but no worse than 10th--in any of them.

His car, a Formula Ford Crossle which was not the newest generation of Formula Fords on the racing circuits, cost Pratt about $15,000 but was heavily out-powered by newer products in the Formula Ford line, most notably the Reynard and Swift, which can cost up to $30,000.

“I competed against cars that were, without question, a notch above mine,” said Pratt, who estimates he spent as much as $70,000 during the year for the car, parts, and a truck and trailer-workshop to transport the car to races and make the constant repairs and adjustments necessary to race.

“Even though I didn’t win anything, I felt good about my first year. I competed with better cars, stayed with them and didn’t get blown away by them. I stayed alongside a lot of cars with veteran drivers and better machines.”

The confidence he gained helped Pratt make a major leap during the winter. He purchased a much more powerful Formula Atlantic car--a vehicle that is a near-replica of the famous Indianapolis-type cars--and plans to make the sizeable jump in class within a few months.

The Atlantic car cost Pratt $30,000. He still has the Formula Ford racing machine and plans to race it a few more times before jumping full time to the Atlantic series of road racing.

“I felt I was pretty close to the maximum that my Formula Ford could achieve,” Pratt said. “Being around the Atlantic cars all the time, I just wanted to drive one and get involved in pro racing and a higher level of racing. You hear an Atlantic car go by and you just know that that is what a race car is supposed to sound like. It’s just a perfect car.”

His pursuits have not left Pratt with a perfect checking account, however.

“Honestly, I don’t know how much I spent last year on racing,” he said. “I do know I spent about everything that I earned in the law practice. If I looked at it from a financial point, I certainly wouldn’t do it. But the only thing I can think about when I’m not racing is making enough money to go racing again. It just draws me.”

Pratt has begun searching for a sponsor for his racing efforts in a belief that a little help will carry him far in racing.

“I think someone will see the opportunity,” Pratt said. “I know I can race. I know that I have what it takes to succeed at this. And if I can attract a sponsor, someone to help me out with tires and fuel and room and board on the road, I believe I can carry this effort a long way.”

In the meantime, he will continue to fund his own unusual leap from a world in which his colleagues have manicured fingernails and talk law, to a world in which his colleagues have nicks and cuts and grease on their fingers and talk wrench.

He likes the first world, he said, but loves the second.

“People in racing are a pretty nice group of people,” Pratt said. “They all have their fun with me when they find out I’m a lawyer, though. They tell about every lawyer joke ever known to man.”

“At first they all looked at me like, ‘Oh, no! What are you doing in this?’ They figured I was just some guy with money who was going to come out and be some goofy kind of Walter Mitty-type character. But I got past that stuff pretty fast.

“Now, I know they don’t think of me as a lawyer. To them, I’m just another guy they have to pound wheels with around a turn.”