Alex Zanardi said after last Sunday's Road America FedEx Championship race that he hopes to make a decision about his future while at home in Italy in the next week or two. Zanardi has been talking to Frank Williams about returning to F1 next year and also has a matching financial offer from Chip Ganassi to remain in Champ cars. Zanardi and his pregnant wife Daniela who is due to have the couple's first baby in late September flew home this week.
"Chip and I are still talking," Zanardi said on Sunday night. "Tomorrow I'm going back to Italy. I'm taking my wife home. This has nothing to do with next year. It was planned for a long time so she can stay with her relatives in case I cannot be there whenever the baby arrives.
"For sure, when I come back to Vancouver I will definitely have an idea of what's going to happen," Zanardi added. "But you have to understand that if something were to happen in any sense there is a priority of people I want to tell before I talk to the press. I owe this respect for the people I've been working.
"If I were to decide something different, or to the people I've been talking to for quite a long time, that I've committed to at some point and they're putting their offer on the table. I'm getting really close to being in a position where I can finally make a decision."
Sources suggest that Zanardi's mooted deal with Frank Williams has been brokered by former Lotus F1 boss Peter Collins. Zanardi drove for the flagging Lotus team in F1 in 1993 and '94 and it's said that Englishman Johnny Herbert who was the Italian's teammate at Lotus in those days will partner Zanardi at Williams next year. In Europe, it's widely-believed that Ralf Schumacher will be Zanardi's teammate as a precursor to the arrival of BMW engines to the Williams team in 2000.
Zanardi Closing in on Second Title
Alex Zanardi can wrap-up his second straight CART title in Vancouver, round fifteen of this year's nineteen-race FedEx Championship. After Road America, Zanardi leads teammate Jimmy Vasser by eighty points, 206 to 126. CART awards twenty points for a win with additional points available for pole position and the driver who leads the most laps in each race. This means there will be a maximum of eighty-eight points avalable from the four races that follow Vancouver so that if Zanardi is that many points ahead of Vasser or third-placed Adrian Fernandez after Vancouver he will be the 1998 CART/FedEx Champion.