Every now and then you run into people who are in a hurry. Alex Zanardi is one of those men who are in a hurry to live life to the fullest. He is a very special person and has displayed his wonderful God given talent on race tracks around the world. He has raced at the upper levels of the sport both in F1, CART, and sports car racing.
Alex excelled and, lest we forget, it was Alex that pulled off ‘the pass’ in the corkscrew at Laguna Seca. Watch the footage below.
Alex Zanardi suffered a horrific crash at the Lausitzring during a CART race in 2001 that resulted in the loss of his legs. Most men would have been content to merely recover and return home. Alex is not most men, he continued to push himself and continues to race and his physical training regimen would exhaust most able bodied men.
STEREOSCREEN has produced a movie, No Limits, featuring Alex Zanardi and his BMW WTCC teammates, Timo Glock and Bruno Spengler, at the legendary Spa Francorchamps Circuit in Belgium. This promises to be an exciting film.
BMWBLOG had an opportunity to ask STEREOSCREEN’s Tim Hahne about the filming of No Limits.
BMWBLOG – How daunting is filming at Spa? Were you able to capture the sheer scale and the unpredictable weather (and changing – weather depending on where you are at any given time)?
Tim Hahne – For sure it’s not easy to film in Spa, especially in these weather conditions. But if you are used to film on the Nordschleife, that’s not such a big deal…
BB – How was working with Alex Zanardi?
TH – When you are working with Alex Zanardi, you better be very well prepared to meet him at eye level. He had no time to waste, but knew about the importance of this film. A good example for that was during the night after his turn. We were tired, but knew that we needed to capture a scene in his motorhome. So he asked: Do you want to film me taking off my legs? Then you better run… We grabbed our stuff and ran to the paddock, where his motorhome was parked. So we were able to grab a very important scene for the film: Alex taking off his prosthetical legs and pouring the sweat out of them. It’s interesting, because at that stage, we were so familiar with his handicap that it felt quite normal to film that. That should be one of the key messages of the film: It doesn’t make a difference whether you have legs or not, whether you are handicapped or not – it’s just important what you make of it!
BB – Did you get a chance to go through Eau Rouge at speed? What is it like if you did?
TH – No, it would have been fun to do that, but unfortunately we had to concentrate on filming…
BB – How do you communicate the effort behind the scenes to ready a car/team for the race?
TH – It was a very difficult task to show the effort of preparing a car for both, handicapped and non-handicapped drivers. There’s no speaker in the film, so the drivers explained that for us. Maybe you don’t get every technical detail of the preparation, but for sure you will respect Alex’ endeavours even more after you have watched our film.
BB – How did you find the team of drivers to work with? How do they work together?
TH – Oh, it was a real pleasure to work with these three guys. BMW’s driver choice was just fantastic, because all three have different, but really interesting characters. It certainly helped that we knew each other before and already had executed several film projects together. But even more, all three of them understood that we are doing a different kind of film here. It was also nice to see how these three that didn’t know each other very well, became friends during the course of the project. It’s funny: Modern racing drivers are often described as boring “media robots”, but I think through normal TV coverage, we only get to see a small part of them. Alex, Timo and Bruno appeared relaxed and honest in front of our camera. We were glad to achieve that. I think this decides whether a film ends up being boring or having a real relevance.
BB – What did you most enjoy about doing this project?
TH – There were several things. First, it was really exciting to work with a true hero like Alex Zanardi on such an intimate level. Second, it was really enjoyable that this film project wasn’t only about motorsport. It was a project that taught us a lot about life. About willpower. About the disappearence of differences. And third: We’ve had really a lot of fun together, joking around and although we were all totally exhausted after the race, it didn’t feel like work. Like Alex says in the film: The passion is giving you this extra boost! And there sure was passion from both sides: the driver’s and the film crew.
