From his record in Formula 1, you would not be able to tell that Alessandro Zanardi enjoyed legendary status in the motorsport world. But the F1 statistics do not do justice to the story of the Italian who died on Friday at the age of 59, a man who faced a remarkable number of setbacks and injuries in his career as a driver, and later as a Paralympic athlete – and always bounced back from them.
The first big blow came in the summer of 1993, at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit in the Belgian Ardennes. At the most dangerous point of the track, the terrifyingly fast Raidillon corner, Zanardi hit his Lotus to crash against the guardrail. Spinning like a top, the wreck bounced around the track, with Zanardi unconscious behind the wheel. Doctors diagnosed a concussion, his season was over.
It was Zanardi’s first full year in Formula 1, after a rapid rise through the lower racing categories and a handful of F1 races for Jordan and Minardi in 1991 and 1992. Just before his fourteenth birthday Zanardi’s father Dino had bought him a kart. A gift with a tragic reason: his older sister had died in a car accident, and his parents’ great fear was that the impetuous Alessandro would buy a motorcycle as soon as he turned fourteen and was legally allowed to do so. Better then race in the relatively safe environment of a circuit.
Zanardi had not yet made a huge impression in his F1 performances. A sixth place in Brazil, a few months before the accident at Spa, earned him his only World Cup point. A year later Zanardi returned to Lotus, but again without much success. His F1 career seemed to be over. So he set his sights on the CART championship, the American equivalent of Formula 1, which was very popular at the time and had a field full of big names.
The Pass
In America, Zanardi quickly ceased to be a side character. In his debut year of 1996 he immediately won a few races, one with a daring overtake on the Californian Laguna Seca circuit that American racing fans still know as ‘The Pass‘. At the tightest part of the track, a steep downhill winding bend, he threw his car from scratch next to that of the leader. Somehow Zanardi didn’t fly straight into the wall and complete the passing maneuver.
In the years that followed, Zanardi wiped the floor with the competition. In his red Reynard car he took one victory after another and won the CART title with dominance in 1997 and 1998. These successes once again opened the door to Formula 1. Williams, the most successful team of the 1990s, offered him a contract for 1999.
My heart stopped seven times
Expectations were high. So when Zanardi turned out to be completely unable to keep up, the disappointment was even greater. From the first moment, his teammate Ralf Schumacher, Michael’s brother, was much faster than the Italian. It didn’t help that the Williams had a semi-automatic gearbox, without a traditional gear selector, and was built on left-foot braking – both things Zanardi had no experience with in his CART car.
The driving style the Williams required “was completely foreign to him,” said then Williams team member Jim Wright two years ago in a podcast. “He had such a warm personality. Everyone wanted it to work, we had all seen him race in America and loved his style, his fervor.”
Zanardi in his Williams racing overalls in 1999.
Photo Action Images
But it didn’t work. In Monza, at the only race in which Zanardi actually seemed to be heading for a good result, the underbody of his car came loose. So after one season at Williams and zero points, Zanardi’s F1 career was finally over. He went back to the US, to the CART Championship where he had recently dominated.
That decision indirectly caused the turning point in Zanardi’s life. At a CART race at the German Lausitzring on September 15, 2001, Zanardi seemed to be on his way to his first victory since his disappointing return. But shortly before the finish he lost control after his last refueling while exiting the pits. Zanardi ended up sideways on the circuit, where another car hit him rammed at more than 300 kilometers per hour – right against the side of the cockpit.
Zanardi’s car exploded into pieces. His legs were largely torn from his body by the impact. After the car came to a stop, Zanardi reflexively tried to open the visor of his helmet and unbuckle his seatbelts, but he quickly lost consciousness due to blood loss. Only due to the rapid action of the medical staff at the race did he barely survive the accident.
“My heart stopped seven times,” he said in 2020 in an interview. “I survived for more than fifty minutes with less than a liter of blood, which is scientifically impossible.”
Paralympic gold
A return behind the wheel seemed impossible at the time, but Zanardi did it. He learned to walk again on self-designed prosthetics, was allowed to symbolically complete the last 13 laps of the race at the Lausitzring in 2003 and from 2005 onwards he drove modified BMWs in the world championship for touring cars, where he would win several races.
In the meantime, Zanardi had started hand cycling, a Paralympic discipline in which athletes propel a bicycle with their arms. It did not stop at just a hobby: at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London and the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, he won a total of four gold medals and two silver.
Zanardi had the last major accident of his life while handcycling
The story of his miraculous return made Zanardi a much-loved figure in the racing world. In his own words, he was especially grateful for everything that had happened to him. His victories were “memorable moments,” he said in the 2020 interview. “Mainly because of the amount of different things I was able to fit into one life. That is priceless, it makes my life absolutely unique, including the accident.”
Zanardi had the last major accident of his life while handcycling. During a handbike race on public roads in Tuscany, he collided head-on with a truck in June 2020, causing serious injuries to his skull and face. He was in a coma for a month.
After a year and a half, Zanardi was released from the hospital. But although he was able to talk again at some point, he disappeared from public life and remained dependent on medical equipment. When it was damaged by a fire in his home in 2022, Zanardi had to return to the hospital for two and a half months.
Zanardi died unexpectedly on Friday evening. The exact cause of death has not been announced, but according to Motorsport his family reports that he died “peacefully and surrounded by love.”
