Paralympian Driver Alex Zanardi’s Gearing Up To Race A BMW M4 DTM

You’ve got to hand it to Alessandro Zanardi. He lost both his legs in a horrifying Indy crash in 2001, but that’s hardly slowed him down much. In fact he’s now preparing to undertake a new challenge.

The 51-year-old Italian racing driver and Paralympic cyclist will contest a full DTM race this August in his home round at Misano, where he’ll drive a specially prepared BMW M4 DTM.

“I am incredibly excited about racing the BMW M4 DTM at Misano because I always dreamt of adding the DTM experience into my ‘book of best moments’ in my motorsport career,” said Zanardi. “The skills of the drivers competing in DTM and the preparation of the teams are, in my view, as good as in Formula One. They are top of the game and you can’t get any better than that.”

While this will mark the first time he’ll compete in an actual DTM race, it won’t be his first time behind the wheel of one of BMW’s touring cars. He test-drove a similarly modified M3 DTM at the Nürburgring in 2012 (shortly after winning two gold medals in London), and drove the M4 DTM race taxi at Hockenheim in 2015.

Zanardi has been driving off and on for BMW for a decade and a half now. The former F1 driver and two-time CART champion has driven cars like the 320i in the European and World Touring Car Championships, the Z4 GT3 in the Blancpain Sprint Series, and the M6 GT3 in the Italian GT Championship. He even won in the latter, and four more races in the WTCC, all without the use of (at least the lower part of) his legs.

Like those machines, the M4 DTM will be specially modified with hand controls – which required (and received) the blessings of the series organizers and rival constructors Audi and Mercedes. It’ll undoubtedly prove a new challenge for Zanardi, and we’ll be watching to see how he fares in the race the last weekend August.

“Alex Zanardi is very popular, not only in his home country of Italy. His extraordinarily impressive performances as an athlete, as well as his unwavering optimism and his humanity go way beyond sport and have already inspired an audience of millions around the world,” said fellow former F1 driver Gerhard Berger, head of series organizer ITR. “Welcome to the DTM dear Alex!”