The Spa 24 Hours didn’t work out as the ROAL Motorsport BMW squad had hoped, mechanical failure stopped the #9 car when the Z4 GT3 was running strongly, a top 5 finish within its grasp.
That shouldn’t take away though from the astonishing feat by the team, Timo Glock and Bruno Spengler, but in particular their team-mate Alex Zanardi, the #9 car heavily modified to take into account the varying needs of the two fully able bodied stars and the astounding Zanardi, whose lack of both legs after a catastrophic Champcar incident at the Lausitzring in 2001 required parallel braking and steering systems to be fitted to the Z4 GT3.
Before the race the DSC Editor and others met the 48 year old Italian, he was in much demand at a BMW Motorsport breakfast – with questions not only about the race to come, but also about other aspirations, and a look back to what turned out to be a breakthrough race for Alex, in 1995 in a GT3 class Lotus Esprit.
Before that though there was plenty of time to talk about the task in hand, and if others were looking forward to some down time in the days following the Spa 24 Hours, Zanardi wouldn’t have that luxury, he was travelling immediately post Spa to a World Championship handbike meeting
“This is the last time I’ll do a 24 hour race with a World Championship handbike race in the the following week, it’s been very tough to prepare properly but we only live once!
“Look at me I’m happy as a pig in s*** to be here!
“Next year it would be really too much to do this and prepare and focus for the Rio Olympics. At this point in the year you really want to be completely focused on your training.
“If you ask about something earlier in the season then I don’t think it would hurt my para-cycling plans
Daytona? (Gary Watkins from Autosport)
“You said it, I had it in mind!”
Do you have any ambitions you want to fulfil in motorsport?
“I’m not going to become an old man unsatisfied if this doesn’t happen but if the opportunity arose I would love to do the Indy 500 again – especially because what I am about to do today is about 100 times harder physically, mentally, in many different ways, than it would be to drive the 500 for me because on an oval you have to let the car do the job.
“This is something that I know already, that I remember and treasure I’m my ‘memories book’
“Technically speaking it is a very simple thing to do, I just have to feel the throttle with my hands whereas here you have to operate the brake pedal very often every lap, and put a lot of pressure. We’re talking about 100 kilos of pressure on the pedal, executing that with a piece of leg that is only 30cm long. It’s physically very hard, very tiring.
“To go fast on an oval is not an easy game. It takes skill and experience. As far as experience I have that, as for the skill. I’ll let you judge, but providing you know how to be fast on an oval it is easier to execute that than to do what we have to do on a circuit like Spa where you have to turn right, turn left, brake and accelerate. It’s harder for me in relation to my personal problems.
Is it just an aspiration, or have there been physical discussions about it?
“I have kind of been offered a drive from one of the dearest friends I have, Jimmy Vasser, for his KW team.
“We’ve never gone so deep into the discussion where I would really say, ‘Yeah OK, we have what it takes to get the job done’ and, quite frankly, I love Jimmy too much to put myself in a situation where we could end up ruining our friendship because we don’t live the experience we were wishing to live.
“But theoretically to be 100% convinced, motivated, focused I would have to be from the word go, 100% convinced that what I was about to do was the right thing and the only guy who probably give me that feeling, telling me “Alex, I think this is what we have to do, let’s do it”, would be my very good friend Chip Ganassi!
“Having said all of that. We aren’t talking about a guy who feels he is missing something in his life! I am very comfortable in my shirt!!”
We saw the film last night of your bike ride with Timo (Glock), what kind of speed are you doing in that situation?
“It’s pretty easy, it’s all about aerodynamics! I was probably going well over 80 km/h, he was doing 69, 70 and I was pulling away! it was pretty funny and honestly I was really not being serious there. If I had got in a really good position I would have gone even faster! I didn’t even pump my tyres up properly!”
Your drive in the wet at Silverstone in 1995 in the Lotus Esprit (with Alex Portman) was, I think, one of the best drives I’ve ever seen. How did that all come about and what are your memories of the race?
“I picked up the Lotus F1 drive when Pedro Lamy got injured and drove almost the entire 1994 season, the car was certainly not competitive and I finished the season with nothing in terms of improving my racing career.
“As for the GT car I did that almost as a favour for some friends who had put that short project together headed up by George Howard Chappell who used to be Johnny Herbert’s Engineer at Lotus.
“Amazingly, a drive I did as a favour made a big difference, people were writing after it that you could really tell that this guy was a Formula One professional, the way he was driving in the wet, and in changing conditions was amazing, he was able to adapt, to do this, to do that.
“It made a big difference to my racing career, a huge boost, not overnight, but it certainly gave me some confidence that if I was given the right opportunity I could get the job done.
“It was a fantastic race, I enjoyed myself so much but it was a pity that George was ****ing in his pants before the race because the circuit was drying and I said to him that I wanted to start on slicks. He said “No Alex, if we end up in the gravel we will be in big trouble. It is our only opportunity, we have 90 people from Lotus Cars watching, no!”
“We went on discussing while others on the grid were changing tyres. Then there was the five minute signal and that was it!
“Four laps into the race I had to pit to change tyres and I was a lap down to the overall leaders at that point when I rejoined (the Lotus was racing in GT3) But I couldn’t have cared less. I was racing for the overall win.
“Not only did I unlap myself, I finished 19 seconds behind Andy Wallace in the McLaren who won the race. If we hadn’t opted to start on wets, if we’d gone with slicks we would have won the whole thing, not just the class.”
Zanardi was beaten only by the Harrods McLaren of Andy Wallace and Olivier Grouillard, and a pair of very quick GT1 Ferrari F40s, the little Lotus finishing just 10 seconds shy of the F40s!
Oh and by the point at which this piece had been written Alex had won two World Handbike titles – on Wednesday helping Italy to the team relay world title and then on Friday he defended his time trial title, held now by him for 3 years.
Tomorrow he tries to regain the road race World title he won in 2013 and came runner up in last year. All of that on top of a multiple Gold Medal winning London Paralympics (below)
They say you should never meet your heroes. ‘They’, ladies and gentlemen, are wrong!
GG