Laguna Seca named the Corkscrew after Zanardi, 30 years after The Pass
Laguna Seca had already named three pieces of its track after drivers
On Friday morning, in front of Chip Ganassi, Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti, WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca dedicated Turns 8 and 8A as the Zanardi Corkscrew. It is the most recognisable corner in American motorsport, and it now carries the name of a driver who died in May. The overtake that earned him the honour is one the sport has spent 30 years making impossible.
The Pass came on the final lap of the 1996 CART finale, on 8 September
Alex Zanardi took the lead from Bryan Herta on the last lap of the 1996 season finale, dropping his inside wheels into the dirt on the plunge through the Corkscrew and landing the move with the race already in its closing seconds. He had taken pole and set the fastest lap that afternoon as well, a clean sweep and his third win of a rookie year in which he still finished only third overall, level on points with Michael Andretti and beaten on a countback of wins. Thirty years later the anniversary falls on Tuesday, four days after the ceremony that borrowed it.
Wheels in the dirt at Turn 8 would be a track-limits penalty in 2026
Run the same move today and race control hands the place back, because leaving the paved surface to gain a position is precisely what the modern rule covers. The corner has also changed around the memory: run-off was added at the end of the Rahal Straight after Gonzalo Rodriguez was killed in practice for the 1999 CART race at the same turn. Laguna Seca has just honoured a pass at a corner it has spent a quarter of a century making harder to attempt. Both things are true, and the second one is why the first still gets replayed.
Zanardi joins Andretti, Rainey and Rahal, but takes the signature corner
Laguna Seca has done this three times before. Turn 2 is the Andretti Hairpin, Turn 9 is Rainey Curve for the 500cc world champion who lives down the road in Salinas, and the run between Turns 6 and 7 is the Rahal Straight, marking the four consecutive CART wins Bobby Rahal took here from 1984. None of them was given Turns 8 and 8A: an 18 metre drop over a handful of car lengths, a blind crest on the approach and a gradient reaching 16 percent on the way down, on a circuit of only 3.602 km built around a dry lake bed in 1957.
Ganassi's Target Reynard stood beside Alex Palou's lightning bolt car
Circuit president Mel Harder opened the ceremony by unveiling renderings of a permanent monument that will eventually stand at the turn. Chip Ganassi and managing director Mike Hull talked about signing Zanardi in 1996, and lifelong friend Max Papis read an address on behalf of his wife Daniela and son Niccolo. Zanardi's championship-winning Target Chip Ganassi Racing Reynard was parked next to Palou's current car, which carries a Zanardi lightning bolt for the finale, in the same spirit as Ferrari's Schumacher tribute livery at Monza. Monterey County issued a proclamation and the California State Assembly an In Memoriam recognition.
Two CART titles, four Paralympic golds and 13 laps finished two years late
Zanardi won the CART championship in 1997 and 1998 with Ganassi, 15 races in total, then lost both legs in a crash at the Lausitzring in 2001. In 2003 he went back to that circuit and drove the 13 laps he never finished, lapping in 37.487 seconds, quick enough to have qualified fifth in the race itself. Four Paralympic gold medals and 12 world titles in para-cycling followed, then a handbike collision in June 2020 that cost him three hours of neurosurgery and 18 months before he came home. He died in Padua on 1 May, aged 59.
AutoNext Take
Naming the corner after the man who ran off it is the honest choice, because it admits what the sport quietly decided afterwards. The pass worked because there was dirt to use and nobody to take the position back at the flag. Everything built at that corner since, the gravel, the run-off after 1999, the rule that now governs the track edge, exists so that no driver has to try it again. The tribute and the regulation point in opposite directions, and the circuit chose the tribute.
What is not settled is the monument. Harder unveiled a rendering on Friday, not a structure, and no date came with it. A renamed corner without one is a line in the media guide and a new caption on the trackside signage. The test is straightforward: if nothing physical is standing at Turns 8 and 8A when IndyCar returns to Monterey in 2027, this was a weekend gesture rather than a permanent one. The man who went back to the Lausitzring to finish 13 laps two years late has earned the version that actually gets built. The series, meanwhile, arrives next year in its first new car in 15 years, on a track that already knows how to bring damaged history back.
