Technological innovation to adapt racecars has helped drivers with life-changing injuries to return to the wheel and, in some cases, get back to winning races and championships.
Alex Zanardi, who had both legs amputated after a CART accident at the Lausitzring in 2001, went on to compete for several seasons with prosthetic limbs and then hand controls, achieving success in touring cars and GTs. IndyCar team owner and former driver Sam Schmidt was paralysed below the neck in a crash at Walt Disney World Speedway in 2000 but went on to complete the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb using a breathing tube to apply the throttle and brake, and a camera that converted his head movements into steering output.
A more recent high-speed IndyCar oval accident with life-altering consequences occurred in 2018 when Robert Wickens suffered a spinal cord injury. It left the Canadian unable to drive using his legs, but with the aid of hand controls he managed to return to full-time racing in 2022 and won last year?s IMSA Pilot Challenge TCR title. In each of those cases, the technology has been developed for the specific needs of the driver, who has come from an existing motorsport background. All of them are uplifting stories of human resilience and impressive engineering. But Wickens wants so-called adaptive racing to become possible for a wider range of people. He wants it to be a potential career starting point, rather than just being a solution for one-off examples. According to data...