1,000 Greatest Drivers: Alex Zanardi

Rarely was a driver so lucky... and then so unlucky.

Unlike Dave Darland and Kenny Bernstein, this is much more in my wheelhouse because while I’ve never been a big dirt or drag racing fan despite acknowledging those disciplines of motorsports definitely need to be acknowledged, I was around for Zanardi’s heyday and watched many of his CART races at the time. I was definitely primarily a NASCAR fan in those years, but while I watched pretty much all the national series NASCAR races from 1997 on for several years, I only watched about half the CART races and a quarter of the IRL races, so I missed some of Zanardi’s run at the time. I have watched all of the CART races from that era since including the ones I missed so I have seen all his wins now. As a result, I had a lot to write. It was originally something like 1,577 words, but I’m still adamant about not writing more than 500 words about any driver because I don’t want to be biased towards drivers I’m more overly familiar with in any way.

This one was rather difficult for me because as much as I do admire his personal story, the more and more research I do into Zanardi’s career, the less impressed I am. It seems like quite a few drivers in that era looked dominant for a brief period thanks to having Honda engines and Firestone tires when the better drivers didn’t. André Ribeiro won thrice in his first two seasons due to having the dominant package and then went to Penske and had one of the worst seasons in Penske IndyCar history. Parker Johnstone set the all-time CART speed record on his oval debut at Michigan in 1995 just because he had this package before anyone else did, and he didn’t do much as a CART driver. Zanardi and Jimmy Vasser were certainly better than them, but since they did so little outside those years, I really think you could have plugged a lot of people in those cars and gotten similar results. I don’t know if I’m even going to list Vasser… he seems right on the bubble to me right now. Zanardi was certainly very good but I’m not sure I quite see the greatness. Nonetheless, I still gave him full E grades for each of his three CART seasons, because I thought not doing so would be too contrarian, even though I actually think every year there was someone better. I think Michael Andretti in 1996, Gil de Ferran in 1997, and Greg Moore in 1998 all did more with less those years. Again, this says nothing about how I respect him as a person or admire his comeback, grit, and determination, but I nonetheless feel at times there was a little more hype than substance.