It’s Like Coming Home : Pruett Aches to Drive Indy Car at Long Beach

The Long Beach Grand Prix holds special meaning for race driver Scott Pruett.

He was there for the first one in 1976 as a 16-year-old fan getting Niki Lauda’s autograph as the Austrian world champion walked along Ocean Boulevard after his Ferrari broke down during practice.

He was there in 1982 as winning driver in the pro kart preliminary race. He won the same race the next year.

He was there in 1984 as a competitor in the pro-celebrity race. He finished second to David Hobbs and became close friends with fellow driver Bruce Jenner, a friendship that led to a driving contract with Ford a few years later.

Pruett was there again for a Trans-Am in 1987. He won that one, too.

He was there in 1988, a special day, when he drove an Indy car for the first time in a race. He didn’t win, but his performance caught the attention of Steve Horne and led to the most important ride of his career--as No. 1 driver for the Budweiser Truesports team.

Next Sunday, Scott Pruett will be back again, and despite all his successes, this drive in the 17th Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach may be the most gratifying of all.

One year and two weeks ago, Pruett was barreling down the straightaway at a test track in West Palm Beach, Fla., at about 138 m.p.h. when he tapped the brakes to slow for a corner. Nothing happened.

“It was what you call a ‘catastrophic brake failure,’ ” Pruett said.

He tried to spin, but it was too late. Instead, the Lola Indy car slammed into a wall head-on.

“It was the most helpless feeling in the world,” he said. “There was no place to go. I tried everything, but nothing helped. I remember hitting the wall and bouncing back. The next thing I remember is looking at my legs. I couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong because my uniform covered them, but I could see that my feet were in the wrong direction.

“It was unbelievably scary, being trapped in the car. The rescue crew had to keep breaking the car apart to get me out. I got pretty panicky and wanted the hell out of the car. It seemed like it took forever.”

Because of the severity of his injuries and the mangled machine, it was an hour and a half before Pruett was out of the car.

“I remember the last thing I told them before they put me in the helicopter was that I didn’t want to see my legs,” Pruett said.

The injuries included fractures of the left knee and right kneecap, a compound fracture of the left ankle, two fractured heels and two fractured vertebrae in his lower back.

“The accident was on Friday,” Pruett said, “and they flew me to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, where I was in surgery that night for seven hours while Dr. (Terry) Trammell put my legs back together. The next day, he worked eight hours on my back.”

Trammell is an Indianapolis orthopedic surgeon who has made a career of repairing the feet and legs of racing accident victims such as A. J. Foyt, Shirley Muldowney, Rick Mears, Danny Ongais, Derek Daly and others.

“You do things on the drivers that you practiced a whole lot of times on the Saturday night drunk who hit a bridge abutment at 90 m.p.h. on his motorcycle and is hopelessly destroyed,” Trammell once said. “The reason race drivers respond so well is because they’re real aggressive, pushy people to start with because that’s how they got where they are.”

The prognosis was it was doubtful Pruett would ever walk without assistance. Driving a race car 220 m.p.h. at Indianapolis or around a twisting street course like Long Beach seemed completely out of the question.

“I knew what they thought, but I never had any doubts,” Pruett said. “By Tuesday of the first week I was in the hospital, I started doing light weight work for my upper body. I had always been in great physical condition, so I was used to the discipline. I was also obsessed with the idea of getting back in the race car. It was almost like I was a man possessed.”

When doctors told him it would be the following Monday before he could get out of bed and sit in a wheelchair, Pruett told them to have a back brace ready Thursday and the wheelchair in his room Friday.

“That was my first goal,” he said, “and I made it. My idea was to keep my goals ahead of their expectations. My birthday was that Saturday. I was 30 and I was sitting in my wheelchair, but I was so weak I couldn’t blow out the candles on my cake. I was just wiped out.”

For the next 4 1/2 months, Pruett remained in Indianapolis, working six to seven hours a day, seven days a week with physical therapists and on his own. Actually, not entirely on his own, because he had to have someone with him to help.

“Once I left the hospital and moved into an apartment, I realized the whole reality of what was happening to me,” he said. “I couldn’t understand why it happened to me. I hated the fact of seeing my body all broke up. I’ll admit, at that point, I hated life in general.

“I couldn’t have made it without my family and friends who took turns staying with me and helping me push myself.”

Another thing that kept him going, kept his future in focus was that Horne and Barbara Trueman, owners of the Truesports team, and representatives of his Budweiser sponsor said they were keeping his seat open until he returned.

“I thought Anheuser-Busch would write me off,” Pruett said, “but they called that first week and said, ‘Don’t worry about your ride, it’s there when you’re back in shape. Just take care of yourself. We want to see you back soon.’ That was a big weight off my mind.”

Pruett walks without a limp today, but part of his 148-pound body is steel--elaborate hardware in his back that locks six vertebrae together complete with rods, screws and hooks that hold them in place.

“(The metal) will be with me forever,” he said. “They took out a lot of the screws and stuff in my knees and ankles, but the metal in my back will stay. I can’t turn my lower back, but that doesn’t bother me at all in a race car. About the only time I notice it is when I play golf. It definitely hampers my backswing. What does hurt, almost continuously, is my left ankle, especially in cold weather or rain. Then it feels absolutely miserable.”

Pruett, whose father started him racing karts in Sacramento at age 8, has always had tremendous confidence.

In January of 1988, after winning four sports car championships in three years, Pruett decided it was time to shoot for the top. He had saved $70,000 in hopes of living in Europe and racing for Ford in Formula One, but when that didn’t materialize, he headed for Indy cars.

“I thought I had to do something, something to prove to everyone--myself included--that I was capable of driving an Indy car,” he said. “The only way seemed to be to buy a ride, something I’d always considered wrong when I saw guys from rich families buy their way into good cars. But I was pretty desperate.”

Pruett paid $10,000 to car owner Dick Simon to road-test one of his Indy Lolas at Indianapolis Raceway Park.

“The one thing I didn’t want was to get in over my head in an Indy car,” Pruett said, “and you never know until you get in one how you will react, but from the moment I began to drive around IRP, I knew that I could go ahead and race one of them. As soon as I finished my run, I handed another $60,000 to Simon to drive his car in the Long Beach Grand Prix. It was the end of my life savings, but I felt it was necessary for me to display my talents in front of people like Roger Penske, Pat Patrick, Steve Horne and other Indy car owners.

“Looking back on it, $70,000 was a lot of money. I could have taken it and made a down payment on a house that I could live in the rest of my life, but when you rent an Indy car for one race, that money’s blown away in three days.”

Simon provided Pruett a 1987 Lola-Cosworth, and after a day’s practice on the streets of Long Beach, he qualified 13th in the 26-car field--ahead of such names as Foyt, Kevin Cogan and Scott Brayton. In the race, Pruett ran as high as fifth before his engine went out.

“I just messed up,” Pruett said. “I got excited, and when I was shifting from third gear to fourth, I stuck it in second by mistake and over-revved the engine. It just cooked it. That’s the absolute worst thing a driver can do, but at least I knew it was my fault.”

In 45 laps, Pruett caught the eye of Horne, president, co-owner and team manager of Truesports Racing.

“Steve told me that if I hadn’t done that race at Long Beach, he never would have even looked at me,” Pruett said. “He said, ‘Scott, I never would have figured that a sedan driver could drive an Indy car.’ ”

Horne said: “You couldn’t help but notice Scott that day. He had virtually no experience in an Indy car, but he drove very well. He wasn’t a madman out there, either. He was very precise and quick, especially considering the equipment he was driving.”

Before an opening developed on the Truesports team, which had national champion Bobby Rahal as its driver, the late Andy Kenopensky chose Pruett to replace the injured Cogan in his Machinists Union car.

“Andy was the same as Steve,” Pruett recalled. “He told me that if he hadn’t seen me at Long Beach, he would not have taken a chance putting me in his Indy car because he said he wouldn’t have known what I could do. It made my $70,000 investment look better all the time.”

Pruett filled in for two races, although his main job that year was driving Jack Roush’s Mercury to his second International Motor Sports Assn. GTO championship.

Roush, who directed the Ford Motorsports IMSA program, said of Pruett: “He demonstrated exceptional ability right away. His natural speed and judgment in a race car is the best I’ve ever seen. His internal timing system is better than most drivers’. On a strange track or in a strange car, Scott can make three corrections while most drivers make just one.”

On Sept. 1, 1988, PPG Cup champion Rahal announced that he was leaving Truesports at the end of the season to drive for Maury Kraines’ Kraco team.

Indy car driving candidates lined up, hoping for a ride on the team that had won national championships in 1986 and ’87 and the Indianapolis 500 in ’86 with Rahal.

“I never dreamed at the time that I might be considered, but people kept telling me they heard I was in the running,” Pruett said. “One day, Steve asked me to do some testing, and one thing led to another until the night before a race in Columbus, (Ohio on Oct. 2), and Steve took me to dinner. We talked about a lot of stuff when he suddenly looked up and said, ‘Scott, the ride is yours if you want it.’

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I later made the analogy that driving for the Truesports team was like winning the lottery, but it’s even greater than that. I didn’t know whether to jump or scream or yell or what.”

In 15 starts in 1989, Pruett had five finishes in the top five, including a second in Detroit. He shared rookie-of-the-year honors at Indy with Bernard Jourdain and finished eighth in PPG Cup standings.

“I couldn’t wait for the 1990 season to start when we went to West Palm to test,” Pruett said. “Then came the accident. I lost a whole year. It’s almost like starting all over again, except that I don’t have to give Dick Simon $70,000 to prove myself.”

Pruett was able to attend races by midseason last year and kept himself apace with CART by doing TV commentary and voice-over analysis for Prime Network tape-delay shows. In October, he felt strong enough to get back into a race car.

His first test was in one of Tom Walkinshaw’s IMSA Jaguars at Daytona Beach, Fla.

“I’ll admit, I was a little apprehensive the first time I had to hit the brakes, but only for a flash,” he said. “It felt so good to be driving again, I was exhilarated. I didn’t know for sure how I’d feel, before I got up to speed, but once I started, I knew I was OK.”

Pruett drove his first race in February in the 24 Hours of Daytona.

“It was a good opportunity for me to get in some seat time, and the Jaguar had the same sponsor as my Indy car,” he said, “so it was easy to work out a deal. I drove about four hours, and we were leading about halfway through when the engine quit.”

Pruett stayed at Daytona and stunned the stock car crowd when he won the International Race of Champions on the high banks by outrunning Winston Cup stock car veterans Bill Elliott, Rusty Wallace and Dale Earnhardt.

In the CART opener two weeks ago in Australia, Pruett drove the all-new, all-American Truesports car to fifth place.

“I thought it was remarkable we did as well as we did, considering how little testing we had with the car,” he said. “The first time I got in it was Feb. 19. We tested at Memphis but got only about 40 miles before it started raining. The crew took the car back to the shop (in Hilliard, Ohio), made some critical changes and we went to Mid-Ohio and got in no more than 30 miles before we had to pack up for Australia.

“For a car built from scratch, it was amazing it finished its first race with no major glitches. It’s very small, sleek and simple, similar to the March-Porsche that ran last year. A lot of thought went into the packaging, much of it because of what happened in my accident. Truesports is very safety-conscious, and we built some safety factors into the chassis that might not have been there if I hadn’t crashed.”

The car, called a Truesports, is the first American-built Indy car to race since 1985, when the last of Dan Gurney’s Eagles unsuccessfully tried to combat the British-made Lolas, Marches and Penskes. It was designed by Don Halliday, under the direction of Horne, and is powered by a modification of the multinational Judd engine, recently renamed Truepower.

“We have taken an engine, which was originally designed by Honda in Japan and then modified by John Judd in England, and have developed it to the point where currently more than 50% is designed and manufactured in the United States,” Horne said. “We are striving toward the goal of a totally all-American engine, which coincides with our efforts to place our ‘Made in America’ car on the starting grid for the Indianapolis 500.”

All-American, perhaps, but Halliday and Horne--designer and builder--are from New Zealand.

The driver is a true all-American. Pruett grew up in Roseville, Calif., on a 70-acre farm where his great-grandfather settled in the late 1800s.

“My brothers and I went to the same grammar school that our father and grandfather attended.” Pruett said.