September 15, 2001
(Photo; "Alessandro Zanardi 2007 Curitiba" by Morio)
Alex Zanardi, 2-time CART Champion and former Formula One driver, is involved in a high speed accident during the CART Champ Car race on the Lausitzring in Germany. He will lose both his legs and a tremendous amount of blood, but returned to racing less than two years after the accident, competing in the FIA World Touring Car Championship for BMW Team Italy-Spain between 2003 and 2009.
Alex Zanardi, 2-time CART Champion and former Formula One driver, is involved in a high speed accident during the CART Champ Car race on the Lausitzring in Germany. He will lose both his legs and a tremendous amount of blood, but returned to racing less than two years after the accident, competing in the FIA World Touring Car Championship for BMW Team Italy-Spain between 2003 and 2009.
Zanardi started from the back of the grid and was gaining ground on his rivals. The crash occurred while Zanardi was leading the race in the closing laps. After a late pit stop, Zanardi was attempting to merge back onto the track when he accelerated abruptly and spun into the path of Patrick Carpentier. Carpentier was able to avoid him, but Alex Tagliani, who was just behind Carpentier at the time, could not and Zanardi's car was impacted from the side, behind the front wheel, severing the nose of the car. Zanardi lost both legs in the impact and nearly three-quarters of his blood volume, though rapid medical intervention saved his life. Further portions of his legs were amputated during three hours of surgery to clean and facilitate closing the wounds. This was the end of his open-wheel racing career.
More recently, he has attracted widespread praise for his return to competition in the aftermath of a crash. Zanardi was fitted with two prosthetic limbs and began an ambitious rehabilitation program. Dissatisfied with the limitations of legs available commercially, Zanardi designed and built his own custom legs, to allow him to compare the weight and stiffness of various feet in order to find the ones most suitable for racing. In 2002, CART honoured Zanardi by giving him the privilege of waving the checkered flag in Toronto, Canada. In 2003, Zanardi was not only back behind the wheel, he was also racing again, with the aid of hand-operated brake and accelerator controls. He completed the final thirteen laps at the race track which had nearly killed him in 2001, and did so at highly competitive speeds approaching 310 km/h (193 mph). In fact, had he been qualifying for the race that weekend, he would have been fifth. It persuaded him that a race return was something to pursue.
Zanardi competed at Monza, Italy, in his first race since the accident in a touring car modified to allow the use of his prosthetic feet, finishing the race in seventh. In 2004, Zanardi returned to racing full-time, driving for Roberto Ravaglia's BMW Team Italy-Spain in the FIA European Touring Car Championship. The season did not see him score many points, but for 2005 matters were much improved, in a series which became the World Touring Car Championship by adding two non-European races. On 24 August 2005, Zanardi won his first world series race since his accident at Lausitzring. He had taken advantage of the championship's reverse grid system, in which by finishing the weekend's first race in 8th, a driver starts the second on pole. Still, Zanardi had held off attacks from several drivers, and celebrated his win with a series of trademark "donuts". He then finished the season strongly. He took further wins at Istanbul in 2006 and Brno in 2008 and 2009. At the end of the 2009 season he announced his retirement from the WTCC
Zanardi returned to a Formula One car in late November 2006 at a testing session for BMW Sauber in Valencia, Spain. The car had been specially adapted to have hand controls fitted on the steering wheel. After the drive Zanardi told the main problem he was having was using only his right hand to steer through corners, as his left operated the throttle. Zanardi was quoted as saying, "Of course, I know that I won't get a contract with the Formula One team, however having the chance to drive an F1 racer again is just incredible."
In 2007 he achieved 4th place in the New York City Marathon in the handcycle division, after only four weeks of training.
He has since taken up handcycling in earnest, and competed at the Para-Cycling Road World Championships in 2009. He stated that he was targeting a place in the Italian team for the 2012 Summer Paralympics. In 2009 he won the Venice Marathon in the category for the disabled, riding his wheelchair in one hour, thirteen minutes, 56 seconds, and won the Rome City Marathon in 2010, in a time of one hour, fifteen minutes, 53 seconds. In 2011, at his fourth attempt, Zanardi won the New York City Marathon in his handcycling class.
On 5 September 2012, Zanardi won a gold medal in the men's road time trial H4 at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, finishing 27.14 seconds ahead of Nobert Mosandi.
Two days later, he won the individual H4 road race, ahead of Ernst van Dyk (South Africa) and Wim Decleir (Belgium), and then a silver medal for Italy in the mixed team relay H1-4 on 8 September 2012. The bike used by Zanardi was constructed by Italian racecar constructor Dallara.
In November 2012 Zanardi tested a BMW DTM touring car, completing 32 laps of the Nürburgring. He later admitted that the test had rekindled his interest in motor racing, and in January 2014 it was announced that he would return to motorsport in the 2014 Blancpain Sprint Series season, racing a BMW Z4 GT3 for Ravaglia's ROAL Motorsport outfit.
(photo credit: MJRoberts55 via photopin cc)
Blancpain GT Series - Roal MotorSport - Alex Zanardi
Zanardi has been married to Daniela since 1996, and they have a son, Niccolò. He has co-written two books based on his life, Alex Zanardi: My Story (2004) and Alex Zanardi: My Sweetest Victory (2004). Zanardi and his story have been featured on the HBO sports series Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.
The book Rapid Response: My Inside Story as a Motor Racing Life-Saver by Stephen Olvey
For more on Alex see our; Alex Zanardi - Tribute Page
This Day In Motorsport History - Home Page
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