Alex Zanardi

“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.”

“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.”

“Of course, when I can get an Indy Car or Champ Car race on television, I never miss the opportunity.”

“As a race car driver, I don't think I will drive forever, because it is not so much a question of being competitive, but of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.”

“My never-say-never attitude has helped me a lot. That's why after a short period after the accident, I'm capable of doing almost everything on my own.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 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.”

“The trust the BMW family puts in me means a lot to me.”

“My wife has always been positive. In the hospital my brother-in-law was trying to prepare her for the worst, but she said, 'Hold on, I don't want to hear that. He'll be all right. I'm going to ring BMW now and order a car with manual controls because the first thing he'll want to do when he leaves hospital is drive.' She knew her husband!”