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Alex Zanardi back in the driver's seat with BMW

If there's ever been an inspirational story in the pantheon of motor racing history, surely it's that of Alessandro Zanardi. The Italian driver worked his way up the motor racing ladder, making it into Formula One and winning two CART championships for Chip Ganassi Racing back before the series re-merged into IndyCars. Tragedy struck in 2001 when he lost both his legs in a crash at the Lausitzring in Germany, but rather than accept his fate, Alex pushed on. Fitted with prosthetic limbs, he learned to drive a racing car with hand controls and got back in the driver's seat.
Zanardi drove for BMW in the European Touring Car Championship and then in the World Touring Car Championship that replaced it, landing on the podium several times despite his physical disadvantage. He left racing in 2009 to train for the Paralympics, winning two gold medals in London, but Alex apparently couldn't shake the racing bug. BMW modified one of its M3 DTM racers with hand controls for him to test later that year. And now he's returning to motor racing full time.
BMW has just announced that Zanardi will be driving a Z4 GT3 in the Blancpain Sprint Series, the successor to the FIA GT Series and short-distance counterpart to the Blancpain Endurance Series. The car has been modified with the hand controls the Bavarian automaker's racing department fitted to the aforementioned M3 DTM and will be fielded by the ROAL Motorsport team with which Alex challenged for the European Touring Car Championship last decade.

BMW X4 slantback is nearly here

Another day, another new BMW spied. Sometimes it feels like Bimmer is developing so many new models that in the future, every buyer will get their own unique car. The latest one spied is the upcoming BMW X4 that was launched as a concept nearly a year ago. The Bavarians still see a need to camouflage the rear end of its prototypes, though.
As you can see, the production version is hewing very closely to the concept. If you peer around the camo, the headlights have the same shape, but the foglights are a new addition. The rear roofline seems quite similar to concept, too, but the back end is still somewhat more mysterious because the masking and dirt hide a lot. Still, it doesn't seem like the production model is going to be radically different from the concept based on the previous test cars we spied in the past. It also strikes us as very similar in size and form to the already available 3 Series Gran Turismo, with which it is expected to share a great deal.
Our wait might not be very long to see the midsize German CUV undisguised, because the X4's debut is rumored for the New York Auto Show on April 16 with a reveal as early as March 14.

Weekly Recap: The divergent paths of Tesla and Fisker

There's no doubt that Tesla is downshifting while Fisker has been grinding its gears. But it wasn't always that way.
In the wake of Tesla's recent success, it's easy to forget that there were once two California electric carmakers with bright futures.