Gary Anderson recalls Alex Zanardi

      In the world of motorsport, and indeed in the sports world as a whole, Alex Zanardi will always hold the status of a hero, and much has been written and said about why the Italian driver deserves this. What has happened to him in recent years has evoked the most sincere feelings in many, and now the life journey of the two-time CART series champion and holder of four Paralympic gold medals has come to an end.

      Gary Anderson, a former racing car designer, worked with Zanardi in the Jordan team in the early '90s, and then in America, and shared his memories on the pages of The Race...

      I knew Alex well from those days; he was a great guy. When he raced for our team in 1991, his Formula 1 career was just beginning, and it was quite interesting because he didn’t know how to drive slowly. That was his main quality.

      He always attacked, acting extremely aggressively on every lap. Moreover, he tried to secure his future because he didn’t know what awaited him after a short period of collaboration with Jordan.

      At the beginning of the year, our drivers were Bertrand Gachot and Andrea de Cesaris, but then Bertrand had that unfortunate incident with the London taxi driver, and he spent a month in jail. Michael Schumacher joined the team, immediately surprising everyone with his brilliant performance in Spa.

      The controversy surrounding his contract ended with Schumacher soon parting ways with Jordan, and Roberto Moreno moved to us from Benetton. Roberto was a good friend of mine and raced for our team for a couple of races. To be honest, it would have been more appropriate to keep him, but the team needed money. And then Alex appeared.

      He raced, constantly squeezing everything the car could give. Probably, in those three races, he damaged the car more than any other Jordan driver. Fortunately, it was the end of the season!

      The best moment, although the most difficult, happened in Australia. The street circuit in Adelaide at that time had quite high curbs, and Alex loved to use them actively. He experimented every day, and every day he brought us something new. You could say the car always returned to the garage with traces of various damages.

      If on Friday he drove the race-prepared car, then he had to switch to the spare one. And after Saturday's qualifying, we had to deal with that car we had already given up on, literally starting to glue parts of the nose and restore the mounting points of the front suspension, trying to finish all the repairs before the race. In general, due to Alex's driving style, the team was left without spare parts after those three races.

      But he did literally everything he could. That race in Adelaide was held in the rain and was stopped early. There were many accidents, and if it had continued for another lap, our drivers could have finished 4th and 5th, which would have been a great result for Jordan, but they ended up 7th and 8th.

      I remember there was a discussion about the possibility of a restart, and I called Alex and Andrea for a talk and threatened them with violence if they took each other out... But the restart was never announced. It was clear that we were interested in working with Zanardi, but the collaboration ended.

      The next time I worked with him was in America in 2001 when Alex returned to the Champ Car series. Throughout the year, I collaborated with Reynard, trying to upgrade their chassis, while Zanardi was racing for Mo Nunn Racing at that time. By then, he had become a more mature professional, no longer showing such eagerness and trying to ensure that everything was even too good.

      He was different from the Alex I knew in 1991, who simply focused on squeezing more out of the car than it could give. And I was at Lausitzring on the day of that accident. Moreover, at the request of the racetrack management and the police, I had to conduct an analysis of the damage sustained by the car. It was not a pleasant sight, and those memories will stay with me forever.

      Alex, it’s wonderful that we were well acquainted, and you showed the whole world that no misfortunes can prevent you from realizing your dreams. If you try, you can overcome everything...