Racing
© Jonathan Borba
More than 2,000 people attended Alex Zanardi’s funeral at the Basilica of Santa Giustina in Padua on May 1 as Formula 1 paid tribute during the Miami Grand Prix weekend, a farewell that showed how deeply the Italian’s life resonated far beyond his results on track.
The white coffin was received with prolonged applause and carried alongside his wife Daniela and his son Niccolò. Flower wreaths arrived from BMW, Ferrari, Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali and the Bimbingamba association, while figures from sport and public life gathered in Padua for a ceremony that honored not only Zanardi the driver, but the person he became through repeated reinvention.
That was the same theme running through F1’s tributes in Miami. A moment of silence was held for Zanardi, whose career had already spanned Formula 1 and IndyCar before the 2001 CART crash at the Lausitzring in Germany that led to the amputation of both legs. Instead of ending his sporting life, it became the start of a second and then a third act.
Martin Brundle, former F1 driver and Sky F1 commentator, said on Sky F1 that Zanardi “was the most wonderful character and the most extraordinary individual.” Recalling the 2001 accident, Brundle said Zanardi “lost his legs and pretty much all of his blood” and that at Monza they “actually heard that he hadn't made it - but he did make it.”
What followed is why Zanardi became such a singular figure in motorsport. Brundle said, “Within a couple of years, he was in touring car racing, European and World Championships,” competing again in adapted cars before moving into handcycling. There he won Paralympic gold medals at London 2012 and Rio de Janeiro 2016, extending a competitive life that had already seemed impossible once.
Brundle said Zanardi had “a relentless competitive nature against all odds,” a line that captured why his death prompted such a broad response. Zanardi had also suffered another major accident in June 2020 during a handcycling race, after which he was rarely seen in public, but the memory the sport returned to this week was of the force that kept bringing him back.
At the funeral, that resilience was framed in simpler and more personal terms. Niccolò Zanardi, Alex Zanardi’s son, said: “It is not necessary to think of great challenges to find happiness, it is in the small things of everyday life.” In both Padua and Miami, that was the lasting picture of Zanardi: not only a driver who returned after losing both legs, but a figure whose courage and humanity became his greatest legacy.