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Alex Zanardi talks new challenge at 24 Hours of Spa with BMW

"I have overcome greater things in my life than driving at night." When considering Alex Zanardi's tumultuous life and racing career, the notion that he might be worried about racing for the first time at night seems patently absurd the moment I pose the question. But as I've discovered previously, ask Zanardi a question and his reply - even a brief one - will offer analysis. "I'm really looking forward to it," he says, before adding: "Also, it will be much cooler." Zanardi is talking about the latest installment in his racing career - the 24 Hours of Spa - where he will race a BMW Z4 GT3 alongside fellow ex-Formula 1 driver Timo Glock and DTM driver Bruno Spengler. For the second year, Zanardi is running with ROAL Motorsport, and the team has the full weight of BMW behind it as it prepares to go up against 57 other cars on the historic Belgian circuit this weekend. I first met Zanardi last year at Brands Hatch on a hot May afternoon after his one-hour Blancpain Sprint Series race. He was exhausted and downing can after can of cola but still happy to chat to fans as he cooled off. I ask why, if that was such a tough experience, he is prepared to do it for 24 hours. "It's a good question, why would I?" he ponders aloud before quickly adding: "I am confident I am as well-equipped as I can be to face such an enormous commitment." That confidence comes from three developments that have allowed him to be the first disabled driver to race the Spa 24H. Firstly, his athleticism; since Zanardi lost both his legs in the horrific CART accident at the Lausitzring in 2001, he has drawn admiration for his subsequent achievements as a racing driver and paracyclist; the Italian won two golds and a silver at the 2012 London Paralympics in handcycling. The man is seriously fit. The next major change is inside the Z4 cockpit, where he has worked with BMW engineers to adapt the braking system without hindering his able-bodied teammates; having two others sharing the car with him is a new challenge for both Zanardi and BMW. New controls, particularly the brake pedal, were designed with impressive results. "[The engineers] made my life easier quite dramatically via ergonomics, pushing the brake pedal and the footrest where I put my prosthetic feet to the side of the space that was available. "This makes everything better for me. The ratio of the brake pedal is changed.

BMW 3 Series Gran Turismo gets leaked well ahead of Geneva reveal

The great power of the internet has allowed us to get an early first look at the all-new BMW 3 Series Gran Turismo, a car that is slated to be shown in full at the Geneva Motor Show next month, albeit without many details to go on right now. With pictures leaking out this early in the game, we'd expect that you won't have to wait until March to get the full lowdown, however.
Our first look at the 3er GT reveals a car that is, to our eyes, a tidier piece of design work than its 5 Series GT brother. The long-backside proportions are still a bit ungainly, at least from these images, but they're helped tremendously with the larger wheel/tire package and more aggressive fascia of the sport package.
Expect the 3 Series GT to hit the ground running, with the same turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder and 3.0-liter inline-six found in the standard 3 Series sedan. BMW's popular xDrive all-wheel-drive system is a virtual lock for the option sheet, too.

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.