Alessandro Zanardi (Italian pronunciation: [ˈaːleks dzaˈnardi]; born 23 October 1966) is an Italian professional racing driver and paracyclist. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Alex began racing karts at the age of 13, building his kart with dustbin wheels and pipes from his father’s work. The team was a real family affair as his father Dino worked as the mechanic and his mother Anna made sure everyone was fed, managed the tires and closely watched the competition, letting them know at the end of the day who was faster, and where they were faster. The financial struggles they faced in trying to compete were described by his father, who said maintaining the go-kart “was like growing a pig with caviar and champagne.”
Trying to find the finances to move up the racing ladder was difficult but Cesare Papis (father of his best friend Max Papis) ran a small cotton-and-silk printing business and though not rich, he told Alex he would give him half the money required for a season in F3.
In 1988, he joined the Italian F3 series and his best result was a fifth place finish though in the following season he took two poles and three podium finishes. During the year he drove for the Automotive BVM F3000 team at Dijon-Prenois.
He moved on to contest the 1991 F3000 season with the Il Barone Rampante team, winning in his debut race, and went on to take two more victories on his way to finishing second in the championship. During the year Alex had an introduction to F1 when he tested a Footwork at Paul Ricard and at the end of the year he drove in three GPs for Jordan, retiring in Japan though finishing ninth in Spain and Australia.
1992 saw him in three races for Minardi, replacing an injured Christian Fittipaldi and there was a test with Benetton, though he would sign for Lotus for the 1993 season. Teamed with Johnny Herbert, he was instrumental in fine tuning their active suspension system but he sustained broken bones when a motorist knocked him off his bike and ran over his foot. Despite the injury he raced in Germany though spun out and did not finish. His best results were sixth in Brazil and seventh at Monaco but he missed the last four races of the season after suffering concussion in a crash in practice for the Belgian Grand Prix.
Alex would also miss the first four races of the 1994 season while still recovering and returned at Barcelona, replacing an injured Pedro Lamy. The team were using Mugen Honda engines, and introduced their new Lotus 109 in Spain but though Alex finished ninth there that would be his best result and it would prove to be a disappointing season. Towards the end of the year the team unfortunately folded.
Alex then competed in sports cars and his first race was at a Porsche Supercup round at Imola. He later drove at a four-hour race at Donington Park where, frustratingly, he and Alex Portman were leading comfortably but retired with eight minutes remaining though they later finished fourth at Silverstone.
Following this Alex went to America for a drive in the CART Series and raced for Chip Ganassi Racing in 1996. In his rookie year he took pole position in his second race, had three wins (Portland, Mid-Ohio and Laguna Seca) and six pole positions, and would finish third in the championship and was named Champ Racing Rookie of the Year. His victory in the season’s final race, at Laguna Seca, was memorable for him executing an audacious overtaking move at the Corkscrew corner (the manoueuvre was nicknamed ’The Pass’ though it would be banned for future years) and celebrated afterwards by doing donuts on the track.
Over the next two seasons he would go on to win the championship twice for Ganassi, with twelve victories, including Long Beach, Cleveland, Michigan, Mid-Ohio and Road America in 1997 and then Long Beach, Illinios, Detroit, Portland, Cleveland, Toronto and Surfers Paradise in 1998. 1997 also saw him race a Pontiac in the International Race of Champions.
Sadly, Alex’s father never saw his success as he passed away in 1994 from cancer at just 54 years old.
During this time he had been in contact with the Williams F1 team and he began testing for them at the end of 1998 (plus he had also had offers from BAR and Honda). Racing with Williams, alongside Ralf Schumacher, at the season’s first race in Australia, he crashed out on lap twenty one then retired in Brazil plus also incurred a $5,000 fine for speeding in the pit lane. There were numerous retirements during the season and the best results were seventh in Italy plus eighth place finishes in Monaco and Belgium (at one point running fourth in the race). In the season’s final race, in Japan, he overtook many of his rivals and was running as high as ninth until his pit-lane limiter activated with the engine shutting off when he attempted to turn off the limiter on the first lap. At the end of the season, Alex and the Williams team decided to end their contract and he would go on to make a CART comeback.
In 1999 an Alex Zanardi Edition Acura NSX was introduced for the American market to commemorate his back-to-back CART championship wins. Only 51 were built, all painted red to reflect the colour of the Ganassi Champ Car and car no.1 was a gift from Acura/Honda to Alex.
Following a motorsport sabbatical in 2000, he signed to contest the 2001 season with Mo Nunn’s team and as the season progressed, there was a seventh place finish at Motegi (Japan), a fourth at Toronto and ninth at Chicago. But in the September he suffered an horrific accident at EuroSpeedway Lausitz, where he lost his legs after being hit by another car and nearly lost his life. His heart stopped seven times on the helicopter that flew him to Berlin, and he survived for more than 50 minutes with less than one litre of blood in his body before doctors did a transfusion. He woke eight days later and though he had no legs and was in excruciating pain he later recalled “I didn’t know what exactly had happened but I had a vague idea..And I was happier than a pig in shit to be alive.”
After his accident, a question he asked himself as soon as he woke up was not, ‘How am I going to live with no legs?’ but instead ‘How the hell am I going to do all the things I want to do with no legs?’ There followed a gruelling, intensive rehabilitation program and besides fighting to survive, Alex was also determined to return to racing.
Almost two years later, he returned to Lausitz to complete the final thirteen laps, the ‘forgotten laps’, of the race that nearly killed him. He completed them in front of a packed grandstand just before the German 500 race, and lapped fast enough that had he been qualifying for the race that weekend, his fastest lap time would have qualified him fifth. It persuaded Alex that a race return was worth pursuing and he returned to compete with a modified car in the FIA European Touring Car Championship for BMW Team Italy-Spain fro 2003 to 2009.
His first race was at Monza at the end of 2003, where he finished seventh and 2004 saw him compete in his first full season. In 2005, the series became the World Touring Car Championship and Alex won his first race, in Germany, and celebrated with a series of his trademark ‘donuts’.
During this period Alex returned to an F1 car in late 2006 in a test session for BMW Sauber in Valencia, with a specially adapted car that had hand controls on the steering wheel. There were further WTC wins at Istanbul in 2006 and Brno in 2008 and 2009 but at the end of the 2009 season he retired from the WTCC.
Since 2004, CRG has made and sold a range of kart chassis bearing Alex’s name and Zanardi chassis have been raced in the European KF1 Championship and World Championship as well as in many other racing events worldwide. Dutch driver Nyck de Vries won the CIK-FIA Karting World Championship in 2010 and 2011 with Zanardi karts.
During this period he had been heavily involved in hand cycling but a test in a BMW DTM car at the Nürburgring in 2012 revived his interest in racing and in 2014 he returned to race a BMW Z4 GT3 for ROAL Motorsport in the Blancpain Sprint Series. There had been hopes of a drive in the 2013 Indy 500, but though it never happened, at the race itself Chip Ganassi Racing presented him with his 1996 CART Laguna Seca car.
In 2015 he drove a BMW Z4 GT3 in the 24-hours of Spa (with Timo Glock and Bruno Spengler) and won the final race of Italy’s Formula GT championship in 2016.
2018 saw him make a one-off appearance in Misano, Italy, in the DTM’s first ever night race, and he finished fifth in a mixed weather race. However, he thought it was a joke when told him he was fifth, as radio communication is banned unless the car is in the pitlane, so when he was told he said. “Come on, you’re kidding me! I am an old man, you cannot tease me this way.” Before the race, he had tested intensively at Vallelunga in preparation because at 2015’s Spa 24 Hours he had used a special brake attached to his prosthetic leg but for Misano he would be using a hand operated braking system, which was a big innovation for him and BMW.
Besides his touring car racing, during this period he also started handcycling and his involvement in the sport was influenced while at the 2007 World Touring Car Championship. While there a representative from Barilla pasta (one of his sponsors) invited him to New York to talk at a dinner the company was hosting before that year’s marathon. Alex said he would be honoured to attend and ironically, he had been browsing through an Italian magazine a week before and had seen a picture of ex-racer Clay Regazzoni competing in a marathon on a hand cycle. Despite never having ridden a hand cycle, Alex told them that “Since I’m coming to New York, I might as well do it.”
A year earlier, he had bumped into a man (Vittorio Podesta) at a gas station and he had a hand cycle on a trailer. They exchanged numbers, and a year later, he called Vittorio and told him he had agreed to race the New York City Marathon, on a device he had never even sat on. He asked where he might find a hand cycle and Vittorio said it would take a year to train and he would help him; on being told by Alex that it was this year’s event he told him it was impossible! However, Alex finished fourth in it but modestly said it was less impressive than it sounded as there were really only three elite-level riders in the field.
But, as he was a complete beginner, it was an amazing result and the Italian papers began suggesting he could be at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. Alex was too busy though, competing in his fourth season in World Touring Cars though by 2009 he was experienced on the hand bike and eventually decided to take it up in earnest.
He competed in 2009’s Para-Cycling Road World Championships, with his target being a place in the Italian team for the 2012 Summer Paralympics, and also won that year’s Venice Marathon. In 2010 he took the Rome City Marathon, followed in 2011 by the New York City Marathon plus won his first senior international medal, a silver, at the World Road Para-Cycling Championships.
Finally, in 2012 he won gold medals at the London Paralympics in the time trial and the road race, followed by a silver medal in the mixed team relay. His victory was chosen by the International Paralympic Committee as the sports moment of the year and the win was a lifetime high for Alex, declaring it the equal of his first-ever IndyCar victory.
A year later, in Canada, he won his first World Championship, which meant he was the reigning Paralympic gold medalist and overall World champion, plus was the world champion in the time trial.
In 2014, competing in one of the hardest categories, he claimed two more golds at the UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Greenville, USA, winning the time trial and the mixed relay plus completed his first ever triathlon event at the 2014 Ironman World Championships in Hawaii.
Then, at his second Paralympics, in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, he won gold medals in the road cycling men’s time trial and mixed team relay, and also silver in the road race.
In 2017 he contested the Ironman European tour plus the para cycling Road World Championships, where he won gold and silver, and entered the Championships again in the following year.
2018 saw him set a new world record for a disabled athlete en route to fifth place overall at the Ironman, at Emilia-Romagn, Italy. The event consisted of a 3.8 kilometre swim in the Mediterranean, 180 kilometres of cycling with his handbike and a 42.2 kilometre marathon distance in his race wheelchair.
Competing against a 2700-strong entry, consisting mostly of able-bodied athletes, he completed it in a time of 08:26.06, plus had also smashed his own world record by over half-an-hour. His previous record (a time of 08:58.59) had been achieved in Barcelona in 2017 and was the first time a disabled athlete had beaten the nine-hour mark.
Through the way he overcame his injuries, and the goals he achieved after the crash, Alex became a hero and an inspiration to many people.
In 2006, he voiced Guido in the Italian dubbed version of Pixar’s film ‘Cars’, then repeated his role in ‘Cars 2’ and ‘Cars 3’, while in 2012, Top Gear magazine listed him as one of ‘The Men of the Year’ then named him as one of their ’Heroes of 2016.’
There have been two books based on his life, ‘Alex Zanardi: My Story’ and ‘Alex Zanardi: My Sweetest Victory’ and in 2018, asteroid 22517 Alexzanardi was named in his honour.
Dario Franchitti said of him, “The guy would simply ignore that he was beaten” while Chip Ganassi declared “He was one of the most talented drivers I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with, if not the most talented.”
