Saturday 25th November 2006

Alex Zanardi, who lost both his legs in a crash five years earlier, tested an F1 car for the first time since his accident. Driving a modified BMW Sauber, he turned in good times which underlined his determination it would not purely be a publicity stunt. “I was a bit too big for the cockpit of this car,” he joked, “so we cut something off my legs and made me a little bit shorter. I told the guys it was a much faster job than adjusting the pedals. It was just fantastic. A man loses his legs, people expect that he will just go home and change the channels on the TV with the remote control. I have shown that this guy can come back after that accident and have the same life. That is the great thing.”