The Life of Senna

by Rubython, Tom

  The Williams engineers said the oversteer sent the car towards the inside of the track and Senna countered by steering away. However, his car bumped again and skidded to the right, nine degrees off the ideal line. They said Senna, at this point, decided to keep his line and tried desperately to brake. There was no doubt that right up to the impact his main concern was keeping the car in the race, not avoiding the impact.

  Peter Goodman, the Williams lead lawyer firmly contends by this stage of the proceedings the expert committee members had changed their own minds about the snapping of the steering column. He said: “The new theory was that the steering column had already been substantially damaged by metal fatigue and that Senna realised this.”

  After the hearing, Stirano and Milen told reporters there was no blame to be attached to the track or the driver: there had been an ordinary problem which destiny had made fatal. They said they reached their conclusions after examining the telemetry readings from Senna’s Williams and videotapes.

  Their view directly opposed that of members of the expert committee – Forghieri, Carletti and Lorenzini – who claimed that Senna’s steering column was already 60-70 per cent damaged by metal fatigue and simply stopped responding after the car hit the second bump in the track. It appeared to be a change of mind by the prosecution that the steering had indeed broken. Forghieri told the court: “Senna realised that if he had tried to steer the car in a way to spin it round, the steering would have snapped.” It was a valid assumption to make and Forghieri was a powerful witness in Italy. Outside Italy he was regarded as an emotional man who enjoyed drama. The court room in Imola had become his latest stage. Lawyer Robert Landi, acting for race organiser Federico Bendinelli, said the bumps on the track were no different from those drivers had to contend with on other circuits around the world.

  Outside the courtroom Adrian Newey spoke for the first time, telling reporters: “Ayrton Senna’s accident was down to fate. My defence lawyers will give my opinion on what happened on 1st May.” Patrick Head was asked by reporters how he was coping with the stress of the trial and a difficult season with his number-one driver Jacques Villeneuve competing with Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher head to head for the world championship. He said: “The only way to deal with it is to put things into compartments. When I am working on our defence, my mind is on that. And when I am working with the other engineers on problems connected with the current FW19 car and its development programme, I have to make sure my mind is concentrated on that. But it is not an ideal situation.”

  In the last week of April Bernie Ecclestone was due to testify, but the hearing was postponed and then delayed again by a lawyers’ strike.

  When the trial finally resumed again on 14th May it opened with Maurizio Passarini accusing the Formula One Constructors’ Association (FOCA) of withholding evidence. Bernie Ecclestone did not arrive – instead three FOCA TV personnel appeared. The court was told Ecclestone would not attend in person but would give his evidence by means of written questions and answers, via official channels, and known as an international ‘rogatoire’.

  The FOCA staffers at Imola on Sunday 1st May were Alan Woollard, the director; Eddie Baker, the production manager; and Andy James, the engineer. All appeared as witnesses. It is believed that a deal had been done beforehand that guaranteed the three men would not be arrested. In 1995 at the San Marino Grand Prix, Italian police had tried to arrest Alan Woollard in an attempt to force FOCA to reveal more tapes, which Passarini believed existed. FOCA had initially been very reluctant to release any on-board footage. In the end it had been forced to by the persistence of Brazilian journalist Roberto Cabrini of TV Globo, who knew it existed.

  All three men told the court it was pure coincidence that the videotape was changed just prior to the fatal crash. They all said that the tape from the camera on Senna’s car was turned off at almost the precise moment his Williams Renault left the track, 0.9 seconds prior to impact with the wall at the Tamburello curve. It was the moment when one camera cut and another was waiting to cut in.

  Passarini told the court there were 1.4 seconds of indistinct pictures and greyish lines which were apparent on the tape when the view switched from Senna’s camera to Berger’s. It was at the onset of this period that the accident occurred. The explanation given for this interference was it was the pause between camera switches. At the time, FOCA TV supplied in-car footage to the national television networks before the advent of its own digital TV network. It also owned the copyright to other filming at the circuit. Thirteen cars out of the 26 were carrying in-car cameras at the race, and four could be viewed and recorded at any one time. Transmissions from three of these could be chosen to be relayed to the network broadcaster. The restrictions lay in the system. The signal was sent from the cars up to a permanent helicopter in the sky and then relayed down to FOCA’s equipment at the track. There were only four channels. Therefore only four of the 13 cameras could be used at any one time and Woollard switched the signal between them. As fate would have it he cut Senna’s at the split second before the accident.

  FOCA had eventually handed the tape over to TV Globo and it was broadcast. But the version of the tape it handed over to Cabrini ended 12.8 seconds into the fatal lap – or at least the record states that.

  Information taken from Senna’s on-board computer confirmed the crash had occurred 14.2 seconds into the lap, so there was a period of 1.4 seconds before the impact with the wall at Tamburello. The tape FOCA TV sent to the Italian authorities ends 0.9 seconds before impact, the court records that 0.5 seconds of new footage remains unexplained.

  The decision to switch the camera shot coming from Senna’s car to that of Japanese driver Ukyo Katayama was taken approximately 10 seconds before, as Senna was leading the race and there was nothing of interest ahead of him.

  But in fact, Passarini said, the next shot on the tape was from Gerhard Berger’s car, not Katayama’s, and it too showed an empty track. “What, if I might say so, is the point of the shots if they have not been tampered with?” he asked.

  According to the court records the three FOCA witnesses all said that wrong button was pressed, thus mistakenly selecting pictures from the camera on Berger’s car and creating the interference, which explains the 1.4 seconds of indistinct pictures between the last shot from Senna’s camera and the first from Katayama’s. FOCA executives Andy James and Eddie Baker dispute this and have restated that it was the pause in the changeover.

  Passarini’s claim that the videotape was supplied to the Williams team 15 days after the accident, but only received by the court on 9th September, was met with the reply that the request had been interpreted as being for pictures of the impact, which did not exist. Passarini didn’t believe a word of it. It was also revealed that better quality tape could be provided if the court had the facilities of a Betacam professional recorder. The FOCA men agreed to release a Beta version of the tape that was of immeasurably better quality.

  Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, Passarini said: “I am certain that the pictures supplied by FOCA are incomplete. Several details show this to be the case and I shall say so in the hearing.” He implied that he was considering bringing other charges in connection with the videotape.

  On 2nd June the court reconvened, ready to hear the much-anticipated evidence of reigning world champion Damon Hill, who had been Senna’s team-mate that fateful day. The day started with a disagreement after Michael Breen, Hill’s lawyer and manager, insisted that all television cameras be cleared from the courtroom. Peter Goodman organised it so the court complied and the cameras were removed so that Hill could begin his testimony.

  Hill’s day in court was marked by a poor translator who at times turned the proceedings into farce. Hill, usually the most eloquent of men, proved he had a very poor memory of such a momentous day in his life. He had also turned up too late to be briefed by Peter Goodman. Hill told the court that alterations were made to the steering column of both his and Senna’s
cars in the 1994 season. Passarini asked him exactly when the steering column had been modified. Hill said: “I don’t know exactly. I think it was before we went to the first test, but I can’t be sure.” Passarini pushed him. Hill said: “I can’t remember the exact date. I seem to remember it being done before we ran the car. In other words, before it went to a racetrack.” Pushed further to confirm it was before the season started, Hill said: “Yes.” There was a moment of high drama as the translator misinterpreted the ‘yes’ as a ‘no’. Luckily there were enough bi-lingual people in court to correct his error.

  Passarini asked him when he had known about the modifications. He answered: “I don’t know when it was done, I can’t tell you. I was made aware that it had been done.” Passarini asked him who had informed him of the change and Hill said he couldn’t remember. He said he could not remember whether Senna had complained about the handling of his car after the steering-column modification, although he could remember details of a meeting he attended with the Williams team.

  Passarini then turned the subject to power steering and Hill confirmed the car had it. But amazingly, under oral testimony, he couldn’t remember whether the car had had it the previous year when he debuted with the team. Passarini then reminded Hill of a statement he had given to the prosecutor in June 1994 that the system was new that year.

  The power-steering question was important. It has long been the view of many that the cause of the accident was a power-steering malfunction that locked the steering at the Tamburello curve just before the accident, explaining why Senna went straight on and didn’t take the corner. There had certainly been problems in-race with the power steering, as revealed by the telemetry from the Renault black box. The electronic system was only in its third race. There had been previous problems with it, as there would be with any new system. Steve Nichols, the former McLaren car designer, asked to comment on it by The Guardian’s investigative reporter Richard Williams in 1995, had revealed the pressure had risen suddenly and then fallen suddenly in the few seconds prior to the accident, for no apparent reason. Nichols said in 1995: “If the power steering broke you’d expect the hydraulic pressure to go straight to zero.”

  Passarini had no evidence to back this theory but pressed the point to an unconvincing Hill. He asked him: “In the two previous races in 1994, did you race with or without the power steering?” Hill replied: “I honestly don’t remember.”

  Hill also said that Patrick Head had told him to switch off his power steering as he waited on the grid after Senna’s accident for the restart of the race. The power steering was activated from the cockpit. He said: “It was obvious at the restart that they wanted to be sure things were all right in the car. I didn’t ask for a reason. I just did what I was told.”

  Passarini then asked him whether he had talked to Senna about the car or if Senna had complained about it. Hill said: “I don’t remember.” Asked about the car, he said: “We found it very tight in the car – in my case the problem was that there was very little room between myself and the steering wheel.”

  He said he had viewed the video footage at a meeting with Williams engineers at the team’s Didcot headquarters less than a week after the tragedy. In the courtroom more than an hour was spent viewing the film from Senna’s on-board camera, and Hill was invited by Passarini to comment on it.

  Hill took the view immediately after seeing the film at the Williams factory and in the courtroom that Senna was attempting to correct oversteer. He said: “There are two distinct times when the car looks to be oversteering and the steering wheel is exactly the way I would expect to see it to correct oversteer.”

  Asked whether the apparent oversteer in Senna’s car was due to low tyre pressure or the state of the Imola track, Hill answered: “You cannot separate the two. My idea looking at it is that the car seems to oversteer when it crosses the place on the circuit where there are some marks.” Hill said he had not experienced any problems with oversteer at the San Marino Grand Prix. His testimony tallied with Williams’ defence lawyers, who in March had claimed Senna’s death was due to anomalies in the asphalt track surface.

  Hill also undermined another of the prosecution’s claims – that FOCA TV had failed to supply the complete film shot by the on-board camera in Senna’s car – stating that the footage he saw during the meeting at Williams also ended before Senna’s car left the track.

  Bombarded with questions by state prosecutor Maurizio Passarini, Hill repeatedly answered: “I cannot remember, it was too long ago.”

  However, he was clear about Passarini’s assertions that a weld made to shorten the column snapped moments before impact: “I came away from the meeting with the opinion that there must have been some other reason for the accident other than the obvious one that there had been a failure in the steering,” he said.

  Some observers at the court that day said Hill was wholly unconvincing and afterwards critics said he had suffered from ‘selective amnesia’. At times his continual answer of ‘I don’t remember’ met with much hilarity. But others say he was just trying to tell as much as he could remember, truthfully.

  The following day, 3rd June, there was a reconstruction by Michael Guttilla, director of vehicle simulation products at Mechanical Dynamics Motorsport Group, the company that developed a customised software package called ADAMS used by Formula One teams. Williams engineer Diego Milen claimed the reconstruction showed Senna’s Williams had suffered from oversteer, forcing him to correct the trajectory on two occasions. This eventually led to the car leaving the track and impacting with the wall at the Tamburello curve.

  Maurizio Passarini challenged the simulation and the validity of the data presented, saying that the Imola track surface is of diverse gradients whereas those used in the reconstruction were flat. Therefore these facts would influence the outcome of a car travelling at 310kph.

  Passarini had all his wits about him that day, and dented Michael Guttilla’s credibility. In the reconstruction, Senna was said to have achieved pole position in qualifying on the Saturday; in fact, he had achieved the best time on the Friday and had refused to continue qualifying on the Saturday after the death of Roland Ratzenberger. The blunder embarrassed the Williams lawyers. Guttilla was also challenged by Bendinelli’s lawyers, acting for circuit operator Sagis, who challenged the validity of the circuit data used in the reconstruction, which they defined as arbitrary and unverified. They maintained Williams had obtained its data through unofficial sources.

  At the end of the day the court saw the better quality Betacam tape of the Senna car footage, supplied by FOCA TV. The pictures were much clearer and revealed much more. Michele Alboreto had also seen the new tapes privately – he was reportedly shocked when he viewed the new images and, due to the improved quality, noticed the sideways movement of Senna’s steering wheel.

  The hearing resumed on 25th June and was preceded by a programme the previous night on Italian prime-time television that analysed the trial so far. The programme, called ‘Senna Trial: The Black Hole’, was broadcast on Italia 1.

  The programme was full of speculation, including the downloading of the black boxes by mystery people and criticism of Hill’s testimony. It claimed the Williams team had gone into cover-up mode after the accident and removed parts from Hill’s car. The programme also stated that a mysterious Frenchman, a Renault employee, had downloaded the black boxes and left Italy secretly that night. It was clear that the defendants were also being tried on Italian television – clearly an intolerable situation, especially for the British defendants more used to the niceties of English justice.

  On Wednesday 4th June, testimonies continued about the modifications made to Senna’s steering column. Witnesses were called by the Williams defence lawyers, the first being Tony Pilcher, in charge of production at the Williams factory. Pilcher was asked by Williams lawyer Dominioni if he was involved with the manufacture of modified parts for the steering-column assembly. Pilcher replied that he was responsible f
or their production.

  Stortoni, Newey’s lawyer, objected – asking whether Pilcher was under investigation – and the judge immediately overruled him.

  Dominioni continued, showing two drawings of the steering assembly to Pilcher, who explained them to the court. He said the original drawing was dated 3rd February 1994. It showed the steering column of the Williams Renault FW15 to be 905mm long. This was elaborated from the plans of Alan Young and was given to him on 10th March 1994 for production.

  Pilcher explained that Senna had requested a modification – the new column measurement was to be 917.3mm and two new elements were to be introduced. The assembly consisted of nine components, manufactured simultaneously by different departments at Williams.

  The assembly was manufactured and inspected to assure conformity between drawing and product. If the part failed inspection procedures, it would either be reworked or discarded. The same applied to quality – if satisfactory, the piece and its components, each carrying an ID label, would be placed in the store.

  From there the piece would be drawn for fitting to the car by the mechanics. Williams produced three column assemblies and the modifications were executed immediately after 10th March, in time for the Brazilian Grand Prix.

  Williams’ lawyers showed that the steering-column modifications had been done properly and that Senna’s steering column was the same as Hill’s.

  Maurizio Passarini then questioned Pilcher about the dates of the modifications and the materials used. Pilcher testified that at least two to three days were required for that type of modification. The parts were machined from two types of compatible steel, T45 and EN14.