Deconstructed: What happened
on that tragic Sunday at Imola
Image credits: http://erickimphotography.com
It has been a
quarter of a century since Ayrton Senna, the Brazilian great, embraced
immortality. His passing away at the height of his powers granted him a mythical
air- a testament to the wonderful human being he was. Along with Bruce Lee’s,
Senna’s death is one of the most speculated in recent history.
In this article,
we are looking at how the world would have been different, had he not suffered
that fatal accident. Oh, and we look at what set in motion the
blackest Sunday the sport has ever known.
May 1, 1994
Sunday
Race day
After topping the
qualifiers, Senna starts on pole. He is yet to open his account for the season.
The pressure of trailing the young rival from Benetton, Michael Schumacher, is
weighing him down.
As the lights go
green, J J Lehto’s Benetton stalls on grid. Pedro Lamy, who was caught
unawares, collides with him from behind. The drivers and some spectators are
injured in the ensuing debris shower.
The safety car is
brought in. The family saloon ambles along and prompts a few yawns. Senna pulls
level with it and gesticulates to its driver to pick up the pace. After five
laps, the safety car is withdrawn. Senna zooms ahead with the newfound freedom.
He is tailed by his championship rival, Michael Schumacher.
As he approaches
the Tamburello corner, the car
mysteriously continues its straight line trajectory at over 320 kmph, instead
of sticking to the track. He manages to slow the car down to 218 kmph in less
than two seconds, which proved too little, too late. The car’s right front tire ricochets off the
wall and hits Senna hard on his head.
The race is
stopped and track officials instantly rush to the scene. The car is slashed in half
by the violent collision. The officials standby, waiting for the paramedics to
extract Senna out of his car.
Paramedics hoist
the unconscious Senna out of his car and perform an emergency tracheotomy, to
aid his breathing. He is found to have suffered three different head injuries
and lost four liters of blood. Prof. Sid Watkins, the neurosurgeon, takes a look
at Senna’s dilated pupils. He realizes with much horror that the trauma is
fatal.
They shared a special bond.
An air ambulance
lifts Senna to the hospital. He becomes the third victim of on-track collisions
in three days.
After four hours
of fervent prayers, an official confirms the worst fear.
Side
The Natgeo/Williams’ claim
In a documentary
made by National Geographic (Natgeo),
they claim to have unraveled the cause of the fatal accident.
Although I have
tried to explain as lucidly as possible, brace for some physics mumbo-jumbo:
They argue that
since the safety car was deployed, tire temperature, and consequently, tire
pressure dropped. This decreased the clearance (vertical separation of the
lowest portion of car from ground) of the car. As a result of this, the chassis
made contact with the ground, which blocked the pathway of air under the car,
which decreased the downforce of the car.
And evidently,
the car did make contact with the ground, moments before veering off the track.
Natgeo says
Senna’s car lost stability thus and the car’s back end kicked out. Paraphrasing
Natgeo, “Senna’s lightning-fast reflexes took over and he counter steered in an
attempt to prevent the car from spinning”.
This proved inadequate,
however, and he lost control over his car.
The
photograph of debris
Some theorists blame the incident in the
beginning of the race. They propose that Senna was trying to dodge a piece of
debris and ended up losing control over his car. Some photos have surfaced,
depicting what looks like a piece of rubble near the Tamburello corner.
Image credits : PH Cohler
Other claims
Senna’s teammate
for three races, Damon Hill and Senna’s title rival, Michael Schumacher, said
that they believe the reason for the grave accident was a driver error.
Hill said that
Senna was under great emotional stress that weekend. One of his ex girlfriends
had contacted him and this drove him distraught.
Senna was under
immense pressure to win the race to stay in the hunt for the world
championship, and he was trailing the leader by 20 points. Also seeing a fatal
accident the day before wouldn’t have put him in the best frame of mind.
While these
claims are merely hypotheses, we have to consider them and give them its due
importance.
Flip side
Steering column broke
According to
another theory making the rounds, a broken steering wheel caused the mishap.
Williams admitted that Senna had found the driving position uncomfortable and
requested a longer steering column. For want of time, the team couldn’t make
the replacement and improvised by inserting a metal plate into the steering
column and reinforcing it with a weld.
The head of
Williams engineering team later admitted that the solution was only a quick
fix.
This theory was
proposed after videos from the cockpit emerged of the fatal race. The steering
wheel seemed to be swerving unnaturally.
Williams refuted
the claim, saying that the accident broke the steering column, and not the
other way around. They released their own video, which conveyed that the weird
movement observed during the final laps was indeed intentional. Observers were
not satisfied with this explanation and analyzed cockpit videos of Senna
driving in a few other races which had similar track conditions. Apparently
there are no similar steering movements or wild sways in any of the races they
examined.
Black box tampering
Team Williams was
also accused of tampering with the black box and destroy any clues that may
have been in it.
A black box keeps
track of a zillion parameters, ranging from engine rpm and temperature to the
lateral G forces. Shortly after the race, a Williams crew member reportedly
demanded to see the wreckage. However, the demand was denied.
Later the primary
memory chips were found to be damaged. Remarkably, the less important ones were
intact. Speculations are rife that Williams may have tampered with it to
destroy any evidence that could possibly incriminate them during the trial.
The scorching laps
While Senna was a
driving great, he was merely a human and hence error prone.
As proposed by
Damon Hill, he was off the groove.
But, his lap
times and pole position contradicts Hill’s claim that Senna was distracted.
He set the
fastest lap of the race in the lap before he crashed. The effort was bettered
by Hill and Schumacher only in the closing laps of the race.
The proponents of
the steering column theory also point out a flaw in natgeo’s theory. If
natgeo’s theory was indeed correct, Senna should have crashed in the previous
lap itself, because tire pressures were lower then.
Tamburello is a flat out corner he had driven through
hundreds of times in his life before that fateful lap. It is not a treacherous corner, per se. How would he fail to go
through the corner, with all the experience he had?
Inconclusive steering data
Some
of the data that was retrieved from the car suggested that the steering column
was not broken until the crash. A sensor which measures the rotation of the
steering column showed a torque of 7.76 Nm at the instant of impact.
Some
experts argue that the sensor measures the rotation of the steering wheel, and
not the column itself. Because of the fact that steering column could have
rotated without being connected to the wheel, the data becomes irrelevant and
fails to build a conclusion.
Senna did pass away. When?
Image credits: pinterest
According to the Italian law, a sporting event should be stopped in the event of the death of a
participant.
Senna was ‘treated’ for about half an hour on the spot before
being airlifted to a hospital. Even though the hospital pronounced him dead
after several hours, officially his time
of passing away has been recorded as minutes after the horrific crash.
That brings us to an important question. What is death? Is it
when the heart ceases to beat? Is it when brain finally shuts down?
His heart stopped at the hospital and was revived once, before
letting go. If brain death is considered to be the passing away of a person,
there is something else that needs to be told.
It can be argued that the race officials be held culpable for
violating the Italian law, for blindly running after the money. Stopping the
race would have cost the organizers an obscene amount of money; hence they
carried on, perfectly aware that Senna was dead and with little regard for his
memory.
The aftermath
In memoriam
The blackest weekend in the history of F1 has rung in some
changes; it has ushered in an era that emphasizes safety. In tribute to his
friend’s memories, Prof Sid Watkins spearheaded the movement to make F1 a safer
place.
The drivers' association was revived and new features made an
entry that decreased the speed and the risk. The car designs and the track
layouts were altered to dilate the risk factor. These measures are considered a
huge success, because only one more life has perished in a race after Senna's. Seeing modern F1 cars make me wonder: if the
halo and HANS were in place 25 years before would Senna have died? As much as I
know that it is a moot point, I am tempted to imagine.
The
fateful day snatched arguably the greatest F1 driver from us, the loss being
much more so.
Senna Sempre.
Senna Sempre.
About author
Pranav PS is yet another B-Tech student from Trivandrum. An incurable petrol-head, he is a Senna fanboy. You can reach him at pspranav10@gmail.com
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