Michael Andretti was sitting at home in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, watching his flight plan evaporate along with every other aircraft in American airspace. He chartered his way over and landed in Dresden on 14 September, one day before the race. Rain had already washed out the first day of practice, and the drivers had never seen this circuit before; rather than send them out to qualify half-blind, CART cancelled qualifying altogether and set the grid by championship position. Gil de Ferran, leading the standings with 115 points, was handed pole without earning the point that normally came with it. Kenny Bräck took second on a tie-break over Hélio Castroneves, the two of them level on 110. The series donated $500,000 to the World Trade Center Relief Fund - matching, dollar for dollar, the money it was about to pay out in prizes.

Bräck led from the drop of the flag and made it look easy, opening a seven-second gap before he ran wide on lap 64 while trying to put a slower car a lap down. Patrick Carpentier inherited the lead and held it for thirty laps until Tony Kanaan came past. Then Alex Zanardi, the Italian who had won back-to-back CART titles in 1997 and 1998 and then spent a pointless 1999 with Williams in Formula One, worked his way to the front through the pit sequence between laps 121 and 123. With twelve laps remaining he came in for his last scheduled stop, holding the lead, running the race of his year.

Cold tyres on a fast exit are an old danger, and Zanardi's car snapped sideways as he rejoined the circuit. It came to rest broadside across the racing line. Alex Tagliani, arriving at racing speed with nowhere to go, struck it and split the chassis into two pieces. Both of Zanardi's legs were lost in the impact; he also suffered a fractured pelvis and a concussion. CART's chief physician, Dr Steve Olvey, described his condition leaving the circuit as "extremely critical." The remaining laps were run under caution, and Bräck, who had climbed back to second, took a victory nobody felt like celebrating. Max Papis finished second for the same team, Carpentier third. "It's a big shock to everybody," said Johnny Herbert, once Zanardi's Formula One teammate. "You have accidents, yes, but you don't expect something this gruesome."

Both drivers were taken to hospital in Berlin. Tagliani had a sore back and was released the next day, though the memory stayed with him far longer than the injury. Zanardi went into three hours of surgery to clean and close the wounds, and doctors put him into an induced coma to hold off shock. On 17 September they said his life was no longer in danger. Three days after that they brought him out of the coma. He left Klinikum Berlin-Marzahn on 30 October, six weeks after arriving there in critical condition.

Zanardi's answer to the accident became one of the most extraordinary second acts in sport. Dissatisfied with what was commercially available, he designed and built his own prosthetic legs; by 2003 he was racing touring cars again on hand-operated brake and throttle controls. That May he returned to the Lausitzring to drive the thirteen laps he had never completed - twenty months after the crash, on the same asphalt, in a car he could work with his hands. He was not finished. At the London 2012 Paralympics he won handcycling gold in the H4 time trial and the H4 road race and took silver in the mixed team relay; at Rio in 2016 he won two more golds and another silver. Zanardi died at his home in Padua on 1 May 2026, at the age of 59. The oval at Klettwitz is still there, a long grey triangle in the Lusatian flatlands, and for anyone who followed that afternoon it is impossible to look at without thinking of a man who lost more than most and gave back more still.