David Tremayne remembers the former F1 driver and Paralympian who has died aged 59

A traditional obituary might begin by providing a litany of its subject’s myriad achievements. But when it’s a friend, and when that friend is of the huge calibre of Alex Zanardi, a much deeper and illustrative portrait of an extraordinary man might be painted by the random memories that come flooding back.

The sing-song timbre of his voice. His beautiful grasp of English, and the way he would mesmerise you with stories related in a manner that immediately drew you in.

The first meeting, at Silverstone in early 1993 when he was still a Benetton test driver, and his suspicion when I congratulated him on being signed to race for Lotus alongside Johnny Herbert. I explained that I knew because of working for the team, and hence not being in a position to broadcast it.

A friendship grew slowly, but hit its stride as we stood atop a tower in Portugal the following year and watched Phillipe Adams driving Alex’s car. Monza was approaching, and Alex’s father was ill.

The F1 career he had parlayed from a superb season with the Il Baronne Rampante F3000 team in 1991 was falling apart. It was one of those moments when the conversation was way deeper than just a racing chat.

How 1995 left him with just a sole Porsche Cup victory in Imola. But Reynard had faith in him, and while he never had the equipment in F1 to demonstrate his true talent, IndyCars from 1996 to 1998 proved to be his metier. Second to his Ganassi Racing team mate and close friend Jimmy Vasser in 1996, he was a flamboyant and oft controversial champion in 1997 and again in ’98.

Who could ever forget feats such as that superb and dramatic race-winning pass on Bryan Herta in Laguna Seca’s Corkscrew in 1996? Or so many of the other victories where artistry and flamboyance combined in his spectacular performances.

How, when it was confirmed he would race for Williams in 1999 in a return to F1, I was so happy for him, convinced he and the team’s Engineering Director Patrick Head would hit it off because Alex loved the technical side of the game as much as the driving. But somehow it never gelled, and I remember the sad conversation in Spa as he related the shortcomings in his relationship with both car and team. It was followed by Monza, where he was running strongly at last until his car’s floor came loose… When the luck was bad, it always seemed to be his.

How he went back to IndyCars and forged a new relationship with Mo Nunn, which came to its horrible end with the shunt at Germany’s Lausitzring on September 15, 2001 as he spun rejoining the track while duelling for the lead. In one moment of fearful violence his legs were severed in the 200mph impact as Alex Tagliani was unable to avoid his broadside Reynard.

How I sat behind the Sauber motorhome at Monza crying my eyes out that day, and how Peter Collins and I consoled ourselves with the thought that, if by a miracle he survived, he would soon start tinkering with the design of his ‘new’ legs… And indeed he did.

And years later when he tested a BMW-Sauber at Valencia in 2006, as team manager Beat Zehnder prepared to readjust the pedals to suit him after he had wedged himself into the tight cockpit, Alex simply laughed and said: “No! It’s quicker to alter the length of my prosthetic legs!”

I remember being enraged to read a report that said he had been a few seconds slower than team rookie Sebastian Vettel, when I’d timed him as being faster, even though he admitted he was so big – he’d had a pretty muscular upper body anyway, and had bulked up considerably after losing his lower limbs – that he effectively drove the car one-handed. Later that day, we flew from Valencia to Madrid; he refused to be boarded early or to use a wheelchair, and later walked the length of Madrid airport to catch his flight back to Italy.

That wasn’t bravado, just a brave man refusing to be broken by his changed circumstances. And he was married to a remarkable woman – Daniela Manni – who, soon after his accident and before he had even recovered consciousness, knew her man so well that she ordered him a hand-controlled BMW…

A friend remembers crying when he made a comeback speech in Toronto as he told people: “Non piangere, sono qui!” “Don’t cry, I’m here!”

What sort of man, other than a hero of the highest calibre, would have returned to the Lausitzring just two years later and lapped a similar Reynard with hand controls fast enough to have qualified fifth for the race, and then climbed the gantry to wave the flag to start the race?

Or would have taken up racing for BMW, begging them almost tearfully as he raced to the first of his four World Touring Car Championship race victories at Oschersleben on August 28, 2005: “Please tell me this isn’t a fairy story, and that I really am winning!”

Some people are defined by their injuries in life. Alex never let that happen, nor set much store by people’s well-intentioned comments on his bravery coming to terms with his disabilities. He always stressed how much braver were the children he encountered – and inevitably encouraged – whenever he visited rehabilitation centres.

“We all have hidden energies that come out whenever we need them,” he said to me one day. “To say, ‘Man, that guy is really brave. If I was him, I would kill myself’, is under-evaluating ourselves. Four years ago I would have said exactly the same, and look at me now. I’ve never thought of killing myself.

“It’s true that it’s very difficult to tell yourself there are people in much deeper trouble than you are. But the first day in the rehabilitation centre I saw a kid in my situation, and his life went through my eyes like a movie. Growing up, going to school, being always the one needing help. Going to the disco, sitting while all his friends are dancing because he cannot do that, not finding a girlfriend. I mean, that’s tough.

“For me, it is a piece of cake in comparison, because I have my life, I have my wife, Daniela, my wonderful son, Niccolò.”

But of course he was brave. He made Dick Tracy look like a wimp. Because neither that display of speed and courage on his return to Lausitzring or winning in touring cars was ever going to be enough. He set his sights on something new: handcycle racing. And not just in local or even international events, but at Paralympic level. There his talent eclipsed even his IndyCar successes.

By 2009, he’d won the Venice Marathon’s disabled category, then won the Rome City Marathon in 2010 at his fourth attempt, and the New York City Marathon in his handcycling class. Using a handbike built by Dallara, on September 5, 2012 he won a gold medal in the men’s road time trial H4 at the Paralympic Games in London, on his beloved Brands Hatch.

Two days later he won the individual H4 road race, then won silver for Italy in the mixed team relay H1-4. He was named one of ‘The Men of the Year 2012’ by Top Gear and voted the best male athlete of the 2012 Paralympics.

The Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 saw him win gold medals in the H5 category road cycling men’s time trial and mixed team relay, and silver in the road race. On September 22, 2018, he broke the Ironman world record in the disabled category in a triathlon in Cervia, Italy.

Sadly, on June 19, 2020, he collided with a truck while making a descent on the Obiettivo Tricolore Italian national road race for Paralympic athletes, suffering severe facial and cranial injuries that led to years of partial recovery and a withdrawal from public life.

Few lives have been dealt such cruel blows. But they should never wholly define a man whose exploits and personality aroused such excitement and outright affection.

He deserves to be remembered as a wonderful friend, a talented driver and a very special man of immense charisma and boundless courage, whose demonstration of the power of the human spirit will remain an absolute inspiration unparalleled in his chosen sports.