Formula 1: Italian ex-racing driver Zanardi dies

In the past six years things had become quiet around him. Calm didn’t suit him at all. There has hardly been another athlete who has been as active since his career, tried out new things again and again and could talk about it as well as Alessandro Zanardi, who was born in Bologna in 1966 and was always called “Alex”.

Zanardi was a racing driver. In the region around his birthplace, there are many who think so. But Zanardi could really do something. In an Italian team he showed so much in the Formula 3000 junior series that he was allowed to try his hand at Formula 1 in 1991. He made his debut that year at the Circuit de Barcelona with the then dazzling Jordan team, and later moved on to the less glamorous Italian team Minardi.

In 1993, Alex Zanardi was allowed to try out driving a Lotus for a whole season, but the success was not great – also because he suffered a serious accident on the infamous Spa-Francorchamps track in Belgium. It was the beginning of a pattern: Serious accidents would more often steer his career in new directions.

Zanardi moved to the USA, to the cart series, where cars with free-standing wheels also run. In 1996 he was named Rookie of the Year, the best newcomer. He won the championship in 1997 and 1998.

Because he succeeded in the USA what he had not achieved in Formula 1, he was able to return to the premier class of motorsport: in 1999 he became a teammate of Ralf Schumacher in the Williams Formula 1 team, which was then warming up to the new partnership with BMW.

Ralf Schumacher scored regularly, Zanardi never

The Munich brand wanted to shake up Formula 1 as an engine supplier, Williams wanted to get back on the road to success. The pressure was correspondingly high. Ralf Schumacher, nine years his junior, scored regularly, Zanardi never. It wasn’t a good year for the Italian. After that, he was fed up with the sport.

But idleness was not for him. In 2001 he moved back to the USA to the Champ Car series. He didn’t have much luck there at first. But on September 15th, in a guest race at the Lausitzring to promote the series in Europe, he was leading shortly before the end. It looked like a triumph. But then tragedy struck.

After his last pit stop, Zanardi’s racing car came back onto the grass verge and then skidded – and so right across the race track where another Alex was traveling at more than 300 km/h. The Candidate Alexandre Tagliani had no chance to avoid it. It hit Zanardi’s car at a right angle and split it in half. It was a really terrible crash.

Zanardi had both of his legs torn off. The doctors saved his life with many long operations. He was given so much blood that he often joked afterwards that he was more than half German.

Alex Zanardi liked to joke. He never lost his joy of life. In 2003 he returned to the Lausitzring and completed the 13 laps in a converted racing car that had eluded him to victory two years earlier. The audience rose from their seats and applauded him. David Bowie’s “Heroes” roared from the speakers. Anyone who was there will have a hard time ever forgetting it.

From then on, Alex Zanardi wasn’t just an athlete. He also became an ambassador. To someone who wanted to show what was possible. In spite of everything. Despite losing his legs.

BMW supported him in this. From 2005 to 2009 he drove for the brand in the World Touring Car Championship (and won a race in Oschersleben in August 2009). In 2015 he took part in the 24-hour race in Spa-Francorchamps together with Timo Glock and Bruno Spengler. He was also allowed to drive one of the brand’s Formula 1 cars – appropriately adapted – for demonstration purposes.

His story was moving. And he moved a lot. Not just racing cars. He won medals in the handbike races at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London and 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. He was a professional in the sport. Whatever he did, he did it consistently.

He was once asked what dreams he still had when he was already 50 years old. His answer: “Maybe being the first person on Mars. Something simple.”

But in 2020 he also had a serious accident while handbiking: During a charity race in Tuscany, he lost control of his handbike and collided with a truck. He suffered serious head injuries and his life was in danger for a long time. Since the accident, he has lived shielded from the public with his family, who have now announced that Zanardi died suddenly on Friday evening: “Alex fell asleep peacefully, surrounded by the affection of his relatives,” it says in their statement.

The figure he was in his homeland can be seen from the fact that it didn’t take long for Italy’s Prime Minister to speak out. Giorgia Meloni praised Alex Zanardi as an “extraordinary person who was able to turn every trial of life into a lesson in courage, strength and dignity”: “He gave us hope, pride and the strength to never give up.”