By the end of the trial, sensing the hypocrisy of the situation, the defendants more-or-less combined their defences and fought as a team. In fact the stakes were high for all the defendants. For Patrick Head and Adrian Newey it was the first time a driver had died in one of their cars. Patrick Head could not comprehend a guilty verdict on his record, as he said: “The charge is quite serious, you know. It is a criminal charge, not under civil law, and we obviously have to defend ourselves to the maximum. If we don’t believe it is the case, we have to put full effort into proving to the judge that it is not an appropriate charge. It is certainly not something I want to have on my record.” Eventually, Head found the best form of defence was not to expose himself to the trial.
There was another danger for the Williams team; if the team members were found guilty, it could have caused other legal problems for the company. In that unlikely event the Senna family were considering their own negligence suit – as rumoured – a guilty verdict would have given them all the ammunition they needed. But it was also rumoured that the Senna family had long settled its position with the Williams team.
The Senna family had appointed a lawyer to represent them but he didn’t turn up every day. The lawyer was merely acting as an observer for Milton and Neyde da Silva, and their daughter Viviane. The family had no real interest in the trial because, as Viviane Lalli said: “It won’t bring him back to us.”
Although Williams was represented in court by Italian lawyers, the team retained English solicitor, Peter Goodman, then of Schilling & Lom and now of Pictons, to run its defence. Goodman had long-standing links with the Williams team and Patrick Head and Frank Williams. He also had close links with the Senna organisation, folllowing the lengthy negotiation of Senna’s contract with Williams in 1993 and became a business associate of Senna’s manager, Julian Jakobi, in 1999. Goodman took no direct part in the trial, but had a watching brief: to make decisions on the spot for the team. He hired the Italian lawyers, necessary as much of the trial was conducted in Italian. Goodman had interviewed most of the witnesses and prepared them for trial. He probably knew more about the case than anyone, and attended every day of the proceedings. In one year he made 90 international flights in connection with the case. He said: “It may sound naive, but the Williams approach was always to establish the truth rather than necessarily clear themselves.”
The trial provoked the most emotion in Frank Williams. Ayrton Senna was the second driver he had lost in his career as a team-owner. The first was Piers Courage on a windy Sunday in June 1970, in the sand dunes of Zandvoort. Then there had been no legal ramifications. It was simply a racing accident, no more no less, to the Dutch police authorities. Like Senna’s death, it had been an awful experience for Williams. Courage was burned to death in his crashed car and that weekend, Frank Williams was so distraught that he refused to even look at the charred wreckage. He asked Jackie Stewart to arrange disposal of it.
Italian law is so absurd when it comes to motor racing that a possible defence would have been just to ignore the trial and let the court make a decision, safe in the knowledge that no penalty would be forthcoming, because the two Grand Prix events held in Italy are simply too important to the country. But that was not an option that Williams, Head or the FIA was prepared to take. All the defendants knew they had to beat the charge for all sorts of reasons. And ultimately they all decided individually that whatever it took to do so was justified morally. In this trial they were the good guys; the defendants and Passarini and his technical experts, the bad guys. Surprisingly, when Frank Williams had first met the then 36-year-old Passarini he found him very pleasant, as he said: “He’s a very serious, straightforward magistrate. He’s a very honest and open individual who is intent on finding out all the facts before he makes his decision and he won’t be rushed. “Williams clearly believed at that stage there would be an investigation and the matter would be dropped.
There had been plenty of Formula One precedents for trouble with the Italian authorities, and all had involved the late Colin Chapman and his Lotus team. Three times Chapman had run their gauntlet. Three times he had faced them and won by avoiding them, using every trick he knew. When Wolfgang von Trips was killed in 1961, Jim Clark of Lotus was involved in the accident and deemed the cause. His car was impounded and, although he was cleared of blame, both driver and team were very wary of visiting Italy again. In 1970 Jochen Rindt was killed in practice for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza and charges were threatened. Chapman was scared of being arrested if he returned to Italy, which caused the team principal to enter the cars under a different name for the 1971 Italian Grand Prix. But as it turned out the Italian prosecutors could find no negligence for the accident and there were never any charges, although the authorities impounded the wrecked Lotus for 20 years.
In 1978 Ronnie Peterson, also driving for Lotus, died a few days after an accident at the start of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. However, Peterson officially died of an embolism in hospital – it was therefore not classified as a motor-racing death and the Italian authorities took no action. In those three cases sanity prevailed but then there was no Maurizio Passarini. The state prosecutor possibly saw the Senna trial as an opportunity for fame, and to put Imola and himself on the map.
The defendants had had plenty of notice of the trial. In 1996, two years after the accident, Passarini finally brought charges against six people. His case was simple enough. He contended that a sub-standard modification had been made to the steering column of Senna’s Williams. The column then suffered from metal fatigue brought about by poor workmanship. This suspect modification finally led to a total failure of Senna’s steering column as he entered the Tamburello curve at over 190mph. Passarini said that Senna was unable to steer due to a useless steering wheel and unable to brake sufficiently due to the design of the track surfaces, the track edge acting like a launching ramp. Even Senna’s skills could not save him from what proved to be a fatal impact with the Tamburello wall.
The nature of the charge was ludicrous, stemming from a lack of understanding of the way Formula One cars are built, modified and prepared for racing. No one denied that the steering column had broken but it was also clearly impossible to know whether it had happened before or after the accident. Passarini said it happened before, Patrick Head said it happened afterwards; and each man claimed he could prove it. In reality neither could, as the trial made clear. But Passarini came close. The weakness in the Williams argument was the presence of metal fatigue and some experts’ dim view of the way it had modified the steering column. Other technical directors privately criticised the way the modification had been executed, from pictures of the crash. The professional reputations of Head and Newey were probably saved by the fact that, ultimately, Passarini didn’t make his case and chose the wrong grounds for his charges. He may have been right about the steering column but it was unlikely that it broke before the crash, as the video pictures of Senna’s cockpit immediately before the accident appeared to show.
Some believe that if it was steering, it was probably the power steering that failed. Many believe that it was a power-steering failure that caused the steering to lock solid in the Tamburello corner.
To press his case, Passarini had gathered together an impressive technical team to help him. It was headed by Mauro Forghieri, the former technical director of Ferrari, and included Enrico Lorenzini, a professor of engineering at Bologna University; Tommaso Carletti, a former Ferrari race engineer; Alberto Bucchi, a professor at Bologna University and an expert in road construction systems; Francesco Bomparole, a representative of the state road contractor; Roberto Nosetto, former president of the Imola circuit; Dr Rafaele Dal Monte, a professor of science and sports; and Emmanuelle Pirro, a former Formula One driver. Passarini’s mistake was that the panel was all-Italian and therefore lacked international credibility. The team had had the run of the 900-year-old Bologna University’s facilities and an Italian military aerospace laboratory to carry out
its investigation and prepare its report.
The trial of the men, effectively accused of causing the death of Ayrton Senna through negligence, began on 20th February 1997 in a seedy ballroom, hastily converted from a Saturday night dance venue at the social centre in Imola, a stone’s throw from where the great champion had died almost three years before. The local courthouse was not big enough. It was not a full charge of murder the six defendants faced, but one of culpable homicide, or manslaughter in English parlance. The penalty under Italian law for manslaughter varies from six months to five years imprisonment, but there were precedents indicating the penalty could be a fine, as had happened in other such motor racing death prosecutions. But no one was really worried by the penalty. It was the cost to personal and corporate reputations that a guilty verdict would ensue.
The opening day of the trial was marked by a lone man standing in silence at the entrance to the makeshift courtroom holding a placard with a picture of Ayrton Senna and the words ‘tell us the truth’ underneath.
As in any motor-racing event involving Formula One, a collection of the world’s media turned up, bristling with cameras. Judge Antonio Costanzo swiftly ordered them out of the court room. He decided that two fixed television cameras would film events, except where witnesses objected.
Surprisingly this was a trial where the defendants, and it seems witnesses too, were not obliged to turn up. Only one defendant put in an appearance on the opening day – Federico Bendinelli, director of the company that runs the Imola circuit. But he had only to walk to the courtroom from his office. He had the most to lose. If the defendants were convicted no one would come to race at his circuit any more. A conviction would merely inconvenience the other defendants. His livelihood was on the line.
Bendinelli told reporters outside the circuit the obvious dangers for Italy of a successful prosecution. He said that in Italy criminal investigations are obligatory and added that no one should be held responsible for the accident: “The risk exists that all races in Italian territory will be banned if we are convicted.”
The lawyer representing the Senna family told the court they had decided not to stand as civil plaintiffs.
It had taken Maurizio Passarini over two years to prepare his evidence, which ran to more than 3,000 pages. Considering the basic simplicity of the prosecution’s case, the size of its document was astounding. In a nutshell, Passarini claimed the accident was caused by a modified steering column failure, which caused the driver to lose control of the car. The case against Williams, Head and Newey was simply that the car’s steering column snapped. The three race officials were charged with not ensuring that the circuit’s safety requirements were met.
Passarini asked for a large-screen TV so he could show second by second the last minute of Ayrton Senna’s life. He said he would show video footage coupled to the Williams telemetry recovered from the team’s databank. “Each split second we will know what Senna was doing – hitting gas, braking, turning wheels or changing gears,” he said.
Only three hours of work would get done that day, dealing with preliminaries. The highlight was a challenge to the state prosecutor, Maurizio Passarini, from lawyers representing Frank Williams and Patrick Head that evidence from tests on the wrecked car should be thrown out because the defendants were not present during the appraisals.
Two more sets of lawyers argued that the case against Newey and Bruynseraede should be thrown out as they had not been told early enough that they were defendants. Newey’s lawyer Luigi Stortoni argued that his client had been improperly questioned by state prosecutor Passarini in order to obtain evidence. He argued that Passarini had interviewed Newey as a witness, not as a defendant, and had not warned him he could face prosecution. He said: “This is a scandal. It should not happen in a civilised country.” That was the view of almost everyone in the court.
Filippo Sgubbi, Bruynseraede’s lawyer, claimed that his client had given evidence under similar circumstances. But Francesco Pintor, the assistant prosecutor, maintained: “All rules and regulations were strictly adhered to.”
Oreste Dominioni, the principal lawyer for Frank Williams and Patrick Head, said: “We are absolutely sure the car was in good order. The steering column broke after and not before the crash.”
Passarini said he planned to call as witnesses Damon Hill, Bernie Ecclestone and Michael Schumacher, and said the witnesses would testify in the last week of April when the people concerned were due to attend the San Marino Grand Prix. Around 40 other witnesses were also expected to give evidence, including Nelson Piquet, Gerhard Berger and Riccardo Patrese.
The opening day’s evidence, once absorbed by journalists, sparked a frenzy of newspaper articles about the cause of Senna’s crash. There was speculation that Damon Hill’s sister car had been modified similarly. On the Sunday the News of the World, a British tabloid newspaper, claimed that the steering columns on the Williams Renaults of Hill and Senna were altered two months before the San Marino Grand Prix, in the same way on the same day. The News of the World article quoted Professor Adolpho Melchionda, a mechanical engineer and member of the court’s investigative team, as saying: “When you saw through an essential part of the machinery, you alter the crystalline structure of the metal involved. This can work but on the other hand may not work. To say that it was a job well done because Hill had no problems is short-sighted. We believe that the evidence will show that he was driving a potential death trap and was lucky nothing happened to him. The cause of Senna’s crash was the work done on the rod. The recent pictures which were released showing the scrap [of bodywork] on the track have nothing to do with it at all.”
Melchionda was referring to a picture taken by Paul Henri Cahier first published by the British Sunday Times the weekend before the trial began. The newspaper said the photograph explained the riddle of Ayrton Senna’s death. Taken 700 metres from the Tamburello bend, it showed Senna’s Williams running over a tiny scrap of blue bodywork assumed to be from the Benetton of JJ Lehto. Having solved the riddle, the newspaper also came up with a theory that Senna may have been holding his breath for an entire lap after the race was restarted and simply passed out at the Tamburello and lost control of the car. The alternative theory destroyed the article’s credibility.
The article, by respected journalist Peter Windsor, alleged Senna used to do this and got a faster lap as a result. But the likelihood of an intelligent man like Ayrton Senna wanting – or being able – to suspend his breathing for as long as 90 seconds just wasn’t credible.
In the News of the World, Adrian Newey’s lawyer Luigi Stortoni confirmed the same work had been done on both Williams cars: “Work was done on the steering rod. The same work was done on Hill’s car. The diameters of the two pieces of pole were different. But to demonstrate that the job was done well, it has to be shown how Damon Hill had no trouble with his car. We are convinced that the welding was not the cause. The work was done in March, and both Hill and Senna had raced two Grand Prix events with the modified cars and there wasn’t any problem. On the third, Senna crashed. I don’t know how many times, if ever, Hill raced the modified car after that. And Newey certainly did not carry out the work.”
Williams and Head’s lawyer Oreste Dominioni told the News of the World: “Yes, Damon Hill had the same modifications made to his car as Ayrton Senna. And I think he believes the job was well done. It was well done.”
The Sunday Times and News of the World articles, from Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper group, generated worldwide interest and the photos were reprinted and examined in more detail in F1 Racing magazine in April 1997. It prompted Imola circuit boss and defendant Federico Bendinelli to issue a statement saying that the photo published in the Sunday Times had been part of the investigation records since the beginning.
The Senna trial was odd because it was not scheduled as one long hearing, rather as a series of mini-hearings lasting one or two days. It would eventually take nearly 40 days, and last almost a year.
&
nbsp; After a gap of seven days the trial resumed on 28th February. Straight away Judge Costanzo rejected the challenges from the two defence lawyers for Williams, Head and Newey. There was a new challenge on territorial jurisdiction from Newey’s lawyer, stating the trial should be moved to Bologna, where Senna was declared dead in hospital; this too was rejected. With that and some other legal posturing, the trial was adjourned for another week to 5th March. With the lack of progress and two seemingly wasted opening days, it was an unusual way to conduct a trial.
On 5th March the prosecution was finally able to present its case. State prosecutor Maurizio Passarini laid his cards on the table and said that faulty engineering by the Williams team and a defect in the track were responsible for Ayrton Senna’s death. None of the accused was present to hear Passarini state: “A modification to the steering column which had been poorly executed caused it to break.” He claimed the car left the track because the asphalt surface was not on the same level as the trackside. “There was an angle with the side of the track,” he said.
Williams’ and Head’s lead lawyer Oreste Dominioni immediately rejected the accusation that the car was at fault, claiming that the state of the track was to blame and that investigators had failed to properly test its surface. He said: “They should have determined whether the characteristics of the course were such as to make the car lose stability and leave the track.” Dominioni called for a new technical investigation of the circuit.
The move against the track was promptly countered by a group of lawyers representing Poggi, Bendinelli and Bruynseraede, who said that ample checks had been carried out on the Imola circuit. Dominioni’s intervention set the mood of the trial and defendant against defendant. To prove their clients’ innocence, the lawyers would have to blame each other. In reality it only aided the prosecution – a unified legal strategy between all the defendants would have been far more effective and much better for the image of Formula One.
The Life of Senna Page 53