Zanardi’s special steering wheel slows his drive at Daytona
AP
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Alex Zanardu, front, practices drive changes with team members in the BMW M8 GTE as he prepares for the IMSA 24 hour race at Daytona International Speedway, Friday, Jan 25, 2019. (Photo: AP)

Alex Zanardi was full of nervous energy as he waited his turn to drive in the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

He expected to pull out of the pits and race as hard as possible in his long-awaited return to North America.

But his steering wheel didn’t work.

Neither did the backup and the yearlong project by BMW to allow Zanardi to race at Daytona International Speedway without his prosthetic legs nearly ended before the Italian even got on track.

“My steering wheel was dead, not connected to the car,” Zanardi said. “I was ready to jump out of the car and it would have been the shortest stint of my life.”

It would have been a heartbreaking end to Zanardi’s magical appearance at Daytona, where the Italian has been the star attraction at an event that is stuffed with exotic cars, an infield festival and the top sports car drivers in the world. But just as the Italian was about to turn the car over to his teammate, the steering wheel locked into place and allowed him to drive away.

“The steering wheel is the brain of the car, you’re controlling everything out of it,” Zanardi said. “I power the car with the steering wheel, the throttle mechanism. If the steering wheel isn’t interacting with the car, the car won’t work.”

Both of Zanardi’s legs were severed above his knees in a 2001 crash during a CART race in Germany. The two-time CART champion has raced in touring cars in the 17 years since the accident, but this trip to Daytona was a journey with longtime partner BMW to develop new technology and give Zanardi another global stage to inspire through his positive attitude and multitude of accomplishments.

After losing his legs, Zanardi took up hand cycling and has won four gold medals — six total medals — over two Paralympic games. He plans to resume training after Daytona in a bid to defend his medals in Tokyo next year, but all his energy has been with BMW and this project with Bobby Rahal’s team.

When it was Zanardi’s turn to take over the car roughly 90 minutes into the race, he was already in overdrive.

“It felt like the very first race of my life. There was no time for enjoyment and saying how lucky I am,” Zanardi said.

Instead, it was a frantic diagnosis to determine what was going on with his steering wheel. Zanardi first manually tried another switch in the dash box, then the engineers told him to just take the whole thing off.

“I did that several times, it wasn’t working. Spare was not working, either,” he said. “Then magically everything was OK. I took off.”

More impressive, Zanardi was able to make up on the track most of the time he’d lost in the driver change. Team RLL and BMW had worked tirelessly on the driver change aspect of the program because it requires precise choreography to get Zanardi in and out of the cockpit. He hops off the pit wall onto the concrete, uses his arms to hoist himself into the car, then sets up the steering wheel after it is handed through the window.

The process initially took 30 seconds but the team had it down to less than 15 seconds by race day. So the steering wheel issue was a setback the team never predicted.

“I feel devastated, personally,” Zanardi said. “I know how hard the engineers worked in Munich and in the United States, very meticulously. They were getting ready for every possible situation. Simulating problems — we did it dozens of times and never had problem. Never once.

“Here we come, first pit stop. Maybe it’s because I’ve been too lucky and had to pay a duty. But the race is not over, so we’ll see.”

A shot at victory was likely wiped out because of the problems with the wheel. When Zanardi finished his stint and turned the car over to Jesse Krohn, the regular steering wheel sparked an electrical issue that caused the BMW to stall at the end of pit road. Krohn briefly got it rolling but it stalled again to bring out a full course yellow and force Krohn to the garage.

RLL got the car back on track but Zanardi can only race with his steering wheel and if the connection issues aren’t corrected, his race would be over.

“Maybe we solve the problem and still go home with something out of this event. I hope so,” he said. “But anyway, so far fantastic experience and even if it would end like this I would not regret dedicating a lot of time to this event.”