“I’m a wheel freak,” Bill Braithwaite, QC, says. “I’ve loved cars, motorbikes and lorries since I was tiny. It’s as simple as that.”

Braithwaite is explaining how, at the age of 60, he will often find himself towing a Lotus Europa half way across the country. “There have been times when it’s four in the morning, it’s pouring with rain and I feel utterly miserable. I’ll be en route to Brands Hatch and will ask myself ‘why on Earth are you doing this?’ But when I get there it all makes sense. There’s no better feeling than sitting on the grid on the start line, waiting for the lights to go out and signal that the race is on.”

Braithwaite discovered motor racing when he was 48, by which time he had taken silk and established himself as a leading barrister in the personal injury field. Born in Liverpool in 1948, he took his law degree at Liverpool University and has practised from Exchange Chambers since 1970. Braithwaite specialises in representing claimants in brain and spine injuries, and a glance at his website – www.billbraithwaite.com – reveals an impressive array of achievements, not to say, given their appearance in photographs throughout, a penchant for fast cars. And so it proves.

“With a friend, Howard Bentham, I go all over the country racing one of two Lotus Europas and a Lotus Elan,” Braithwaite says. The pair are members of the Historic Sports Car Club, and Braithwaite reckons that they take part in eight to ten races in a season running from April to October. “I was at university with Howard, and we’ve remained close friends,” Braithwaite explains. “One day he rang me and said ‘If we don’t give this a go now, we’ll never do it.’ He was right. It was thanks to that call that we’ve been racing for the past 12 years.”

Bentham is also a QC, but one suspects that though he clearly shares Braithwaite’s passion for racing, he might not also be entitled to drive a heavy goods vehicle. Braithwaite explains how he came to add an HGV licence to his collection of qualifications: “My next door neighbour used to own a fleet of lorries. He would often tell me how difficult they were to drive, but I thought ‘If he can do it, so can I.’ He was kind enough to lend me a huge articulated lorry, which I used to drive to chambers.” Braithwaite’s absorption paid off – he has passed both the standard and advanced HGV tests.

Braithwaite has also passed the Institute of Advanced Motorists’ driving test, and has a competition licence, without which he wouldn’t be able to race. Has he, though, ever won a race?

“No, there’s always someone faster,” is his phlegmatic reply. He adds, with admirable candour, that: “Once I was racing at Silverstone and every car crashed out. Come the restart I was sitting all alone, without a car near me. But unfortunately there were still four or five cars further ahead. I have been on the front row once, but I span out on the first corner.” Indeed, as he says wryly: “I’ve spun out on every corner on every major racetrack in the country.”

But for Braithwaite, whose first car was a Triumph Roadster, there is a sense that while winning would be nice, it’s not what motivates him. To hear him talk of the engine set-ups in his cherished Lotuses is to encounter a man thoroughly rapt in the design and performance of fast cars. But is his motor racing a form of stress relief from the law? “No,” he says, “it’s just fun. I’m a wheel freak, and that’s it.”

See www.billbraithwaite.com and www.hscc.org.uk for more information

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