Words matter. These are the best Alex Zanardi Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Never say never, always try to see if there is an opportunity to go around the problem if you can’t go across it.
It makes me feel great when I’m driving and talking to my wife, and I look in the mirror, and my son is sleeping in the back.
At the time I was asked if I would ever step back in a race car, but what was very important for me was to go into the bathroom and pee on my own, but I could not do that. I had to be helped. That was my number one priority.
We all are limited in that none of us can fly and none of us can run faster than some animals, but we figure out a way to go to Tokyo if we have to, right? Or we run faster than an animal with a race car.
That’s what I admire the most of my mom, that’s she’s so tough.
You only recognize how good something is if you’ve been through the bad.
I try to, pardon the expression, stay with my feet on the ground.
I will do something, time to time, with motor racing. But I’ll never go back, I think, to drive full-time because I’ve lost that anger, that desire.
When you’re young, not only do you not have any money, you don’t think something can happen to you. I raced some races without insurance in the early days of my career. I didn’t think about it at all.
My parents taught me that I could always improve on things.
The first time the doctors put on my prosthetic legs they made me much taller than I’d ever been. I then remember the doctor saying ‘we need to shorten this man’ and we all were in hysterics.
It’s always good to let people know your emotions for them because love is what drives everything.
It may look weird to an outsider to watch me jump out of the car basically walking on my arms. Of course, it’s very easy for me.
I would not be who I am if I were not putting pressure on me to up the level of my game further.
I’m no different from other drivers – my talent is in my brain, not in my right foot.
I’m just a very curious guy who has a lot of possibility.
Vancouver is a street course in the true meaning of the word. There are a lot of places where you can lose the car and end up staying there at least for the session, or for the rest of the race.
I am very proud to become a BMW Brand Ambassador. BMW is like a second family, and over the past years we not only enjoyed great times together at the track, but we have also become close friends.
I have to give this comment about the American people – they are very good fans. But they are very protective. I think they would prefer it if their great stars are born in America. They are the ones that only stay in the hearts of the fans. And that’s understandable.
I bump into a lot of people that have similar problems that I have but less titles or magazines than I have, and they just challenge their adversity with the same tenacity, with the same enthusiasm, with the same will to succeed because life is one and you’ve got to take advantage.
The accident for sure was one of the most important experiences of my life. During the course of my rehabilitation I had people who were exactly what I needed to be inspired.
Portland is a permanent road course built in a beautiful state, which is for me a fantastic area for many reasons. The downside is that the weather is so unpredictable that it’s not uncommon to start the race on the dry and end with the rain as it happened to me in 1996 when I won my first Champ Car race.
I enjoy being in the middle of my journey much more than being close to the end.
It’s not much different to Formula One where they are improving the cars constantly. The difference is every hand biker needs a different bike depending on their residual ability.
When you find yourself in a certain situation you have to identify where you want to go and focus on what you can achieve on that given day.
When I arrived in Champ Cars, which at the time used to be called Indy Cars and then got renamed CART and then renamed Champ Cars, I was racing against Jimmy Vasser, my team-mate, but more than him, I was racing against Michael Andretti, Emerson Fittapaldi, Al Unser Jr. – guys that had big names.
You have to let the car do the job and try to trust it, try to understand what you are doing, try to be smooth, and try to be incredibly smart to set the car up, because that is the most important part.
My accident was the result of incredible fate, with me spinning in a place I shouldn’t have, with a car coming at a speed it shouldn’t have, and hitting me with the sharpest and strongest thing that it has, which is the nose, in the most vulnerable part of the car, which is between the side part and the front wheel.
I believe the perfect life is the right combination between great things, great success and stupid mistakes or failures.
You don’t know how many times I fell just taking ridiculous small steps.
Disabilities are a very relative condition, it is something that defines a situation, but if you can’t jump over the problem then you can certainly go around it.
When my son was just a kid, I remember him going for a running race at school and winning and coming to hug me. I realized my heart was absolutely full of joy, there was no space left.
Obviously, my wife is very important, very important because in all this time she never watched me with that look that means ‘I am sorry,’ or that means ‘poor you.’
The memories are vague of the accident. I remember coming out of the pitlane with cruise control, letting it go and then losing control of the car. I remember my hands frantically operating the steering wheel trying to recover control of the car, then this big, big noise and nothing more.
I’ve certainly had many more opportunities than I deserved, but luckily enough I ended up making the right choices.
Obviously my feelings for Portland are quite special because that’s where I obtained one of my greatest career satisfactions; like the first love, you never forget the first win!
I haven’t done any of the things I have done to inspire others, but I am sure that if I am watching my story from the outside I would be joining the club saying, ‘Wow, that guy really gets you going.’
The first thought that will go through my mind in the morning when I open my eyes will be very much related to my current dreams, rather than to my past nightmares.
Everything you do tends to make you accomplish another step on the road to complete yourself.
I shouldn’t have survived that accident. Science didn’t give me a single chance. I basically survived for about 50 minutes with less than one liter of blood. Science says that’s simply impossible.
I have always had a very smooth driving style. But when I started competing as a disabled driver, I had to take that even more to the extreme.
Everybody is calling me crazy because I want to do the Ironman. I’m not doing it to win it. I’m doing it to finish it. I’m racing myself, not a particular field or group of people.
As far as talking, I’m a pretty competitive dude.
I feel gifted for having the opportunity to compete in Daytona.
Today, I don’t have any psychological scars, because I am a realist and an optimist. After all, I can’t lose my legs twice.
The perfect life is the combination of great moments and bad ones, and under that point of view, my life is fantastic, because I’ve certainly hit more than one bump.
Daytona has some of the greatest fans in the world and many remember me from some of the things I’ve done in this wonderful country.
Once you put everything in the right perspective, even bad times can be an opportunity to refresh your appetite, your desire.
We all have expectations but sometimes the greatest thing is to be surprised with what happens and to find out that it is quite different from the way you imagined it.
As you approach the finish line, you go through a tunnel of people, all of them cheering and encouraging you. Then I heard the speaker say, ‘Alessandro Zanardi, you are an Ironman!’ It was something phenomenal, something amazing… I got very emotional at that point.
After my crash I never doubted it would be hard but I would be lying to say this new life has been a surprise to me.
The important thing in life, not just in sports, is to be able to set a new target in front of you, which is very much related to the deck of cards you’ve got available.
After I finished racing in the United States, I received a lot of criticism for being dangerous, a little bit stupid, insane, you name it.
I said I preferred Daytona to LeMans if I were to race. LeMans is a great event, don’t get me wrong, but here in the U.S. is where I turned my life around, where I have a lot of friends, where I feel have my greatest following – not in terms of quantity but of quality – of racing fans.
When you accomplish something that is very special, it will stay forever.
When I returned to the Touring Car championship, I got the team to create a special brake pedal that I could use with my prosthetic leg.
You have to accept the fact that as long as you are alive, you have something to lose. Living is dangerous.
If I ever won the Indy 500, I can tell you that I wouldn’t worry about my engine, that’s for sure.
First time you step on these new legs, it’s bloody hard. It’s painful on your pelvic bones. But every day I get more of a feel for where my feet are.
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