Imola 1994

[Ronnie]

I know it is all irrelevant since it's now nearly 11 years after the black weekend. I don't know how well any of you have studied the footage of Senna's accident but what amazes me is as follows;

The footage from the BBC panned over and around Senna's Williams when it came to rest and what could be seen as clear as that day was that inside the cockpit Senna was holding the Steering wheel with his left hand just above the knees. Yes the steering attached to part of the column is resting on his lap and he has at least one hand still clenched to it. (if you doubt me please watch it again) Drivers at any level of racing are taught to remove their hands from the steering just before they are about to have a heavy impact to avoid breaking their hands, wrists or arms. The investigation concluded that there was fatigue in the steering column but not sufficient enough for the column to have broken before the high impact at Tamburello. Are we to believe that the steering wheel was still in it's correct position on impact and Senna kept his hands on it and it still ended up on his lap with at least one hand still clenched to it. This to me is unacceptable, I am not the only person to have witnessed this, I saw the same pictures everyone else saw so why was it never mentioned or highlighted. To my mind It's absolutely cut and dry as to why he left the track as much as it is why he was killed.

I apologise to anybody who is offended by my bringing this up but I am a huge admirer of Senna & it is something that I have felt very strongly about for a long time and I was astonished that not one person has ever admitted to seeing exactly what I saw. Accidents happen and racing cars fail, Williams modified the car and it failed, that is life unfortunately.

[JayVee]

No offence here. It just brings back sad memories.

Perhaps someone can post a link to the footage if there is a site out there ?

I think each person reacts differently. I would consider myself a huge admirer of Senna too but I never got too interested in the events post Senna's death. To me, any Formula 1 driver is taking huge risks and face death at every session and every race. Senna was taken away from us for whatever the reason may be and he cannot come back.

Also may I point out that there is always the element of controversy/conspiracy when a popular/loved person gets killed. When one has strong feelings, acceptance of the truth becomes hard sometimes.

SENNA R.I.P

[Shifter]

I never saw that footage, but I did, however, witness the crash itself from the onboard camera of Schumacher, who was following Senna thru Tamburello. In my opinon, if the steering column broke the car would have flatly veered off-line. The car appears to do so, but upon close inspection of the tape I percieve a pronunced wiggle, in one millisecond looking like oversteer and in another looking like understeer. In my analysis, there are a number of things that point to the car bottoming out being the cause of the accident. The field of cars was strung around behind the safety car for a number of laps, and the driver of the safety car, Max Angelelli, stated that he was going as fast as humanly possible but that Senna pulled alongside him, looking kind of freaked and motioning Max to go faster. So we can assume that Senna's Williams was loosing tire pressure (and, thus, ride height) very quickly. Futhermore, there was visible bottoming of the cars all around the track, with sparks flying from the undersides of the cars. Finally, Senna left the racing line at the very point of a massive undulation in the tamburello corner that other drivers were avoiding. Due to the high G-forces attained in the corner, a heavy bottoming of the car could very well have snapped the car off line so quickly that the front tires had no chance of re-adhereing to the road surface and pulling the car back on line. So it kind of looked like steering failure, and we may never know for sure, but I think it was the car bottoming out.

[Woogle]

I for one don't want to relive that terrible race weekend.

But we should at least remember that there was 2 race drivers that lost their lives on that race weekend & one other who was injured.


Who were the other 2???? I know!!!!!!

[JayVee]

Fully agree Woogle

That was the black weekend in Formula 1

We lost Senna and Ratzenberger and Barrichello had a bad crash too

Senna and Ratzenberger RIP

[Julian Mayo]

I think that Ratzenberger was a great loss ! He used to regularly beat "The Great Schumaker" during their careers prior to F1