After winning consecutive CART crowns Zanardi joined Williams for ’99 but it turned out to be the right place at the wrong time.
Photo: Williams Archive
Alessandro Zanardi is an inspiration to us all. Here is a double CART champion who lost both his legs in a devastating motor racing accident in 2001, nearly bled to death, underwent more surgery in which his legs were further shortened to allow them to heal, fought back through a long, painful and exhausting rehabilitation course. And as if that were not enough, he made his motor racing comeback in 2004 with BMW Italy-Spain, won his first World Touring Car Championship race in 2005, goes hand cycling, is working himself up to Paralympic standard and presents his own Italian TV program.
Seen here in his Target Ganassi Reynard-Honda at Houston in 1998, Zanardi won 12 of 36 starts while claiming the ’97 and ’98 CART championships. Photo: Dan R. Boyd
In May 2003, he even went back to the EuroSpeedway, 80 miles south of Berlin, Germany, where the accident happened 13 laps from the end in 2001 and covered those uncompleted laps in a ChampCar using hip- and hand-operated brake and accelerator controls. He clocked almost 193 mph, and that would have been enough to put him in 5th place on the grid for the 2003 event!
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