Allesandro Zanardi finished fifth in the Blancpain sprint race at Brands Hatch in the UK in a special hand-controlled ROAL Motorsport Z4 GT3. The circuit was the site of Zanardi’s 2012 Paralympic handbike wins.

    Zanardi’s finish was the second-best BMW performance in the race; the BMW Sports Trophy Team Brazil Z4 GT3 of Sergio Jimenez and Caca Bueno finished third. The flag-to-flag win in the one-hour race went to Jeroen Bleekemolen and Hari Proczyk in the #28 Grasser Racing Team Lamborghini Gallardo FL2 GT3.

    Finishes in the qualifying race held earlier in the day set positions for the feature sprint. Jimenez and Bueno had finished third in the qualifying race while Zanardi had finished seventeenth after spinning.

    Zanardi’s charge through the pack was made more difficult by his struggle to stay cool. He explained, “The problem is the way we cool down as human beings is through our limbs, so the limbs are like the cooler of the engine and for me with no legs it is like an engine with no cooler. The bit of my body I have left is trapped into the prosthetic legs, which do not allow any breathing. That is why cooling is so difficult for me.”

    He went on to say, “Man it was tough. At least with the handbike I could breath. It was literally like a pan fire. At the beginning of the race it wasn’t that bad because I had my cooling stuff, which was working, but then 25 minutes into the race it was arrivederci, so I just had to fight in the car. It was one of the toughest things I have done on wheels, either three or four. But we can make it better because there is a bigger bag available for cooling.”

    The next Blancpain Sprint race will be held at Zandvoort in July. Zanardi will miss the race because of a commitment that he had made to a handbike race before the ROAL Blancpain deal was done. He will return to the series in a late-August race at the Slovakia ring,

    North American fans will be able to watch future races in the series. CBS Sports Network has just announced that it will provide same-day coverage of Blancpain GT races as part of the CBS Sports Spectacular Series.—Brian S. Morgan