30 April 1997 Nicki Lauda has had his license of air pilot revoked, following his third kidney operation.
30 April 1997 The next two hearings of the trial for Senna's death, scheduled for 6 and 7 May, could be cancelled. Some of the lawyers involved in the trial have joined the strike scheduled for 5-9 May. By law, the absence of just one of the defense lawyers is enough to block a hearing.
29 April 1997 Lola Formula 1 Teams has gone into liquidation with 6 million pounds debt, after failing to find a new buyer. Lola retired after the first two GPs, for both of which it failed to qualify. The cars are expected to be bought by collectors.
28 April 1997 Prost is considering getting rid of Nakano after his poor performance so far this year compared to team mate Panis. Nakano is engaged to Hirotoshi Honda's daughter, which might make it difficult for Prost to remove Nakano from his drive, as Honda provides Prost with the engines. Possible alternatives to Nakano for the Prost drive are Collard and Morbidelli.
27 April 1997 Following his collision with Nakano, Damon Hill was given a one-race suspended ban.
27 April 1997 Frentzen obtained the fist ever GP victory of his career at Imola. The Italian fans were treated to a double Ferrari podium with M. Schumacher (2nd) and Irvine (3rd). Fisichella was 4th while his team mate R. Schumacher, whom he collided with in Argentina, was forced to retire. Alesi was 5th and Hakkinen 6th. Favourite Villeneuve retired after his car became stuck in fifth gear. Berger, Coulthard and Herbert were other casualties of the race, while reigning World Champion Damon Hill's race ended when he rammed Nakano trying to overtake him on a bend. Hill had started the race from the pits, after having troubles with his car before the race started. Rain started to fall with 10 laps to go, but it was never strong enough to make a difference as for the type of tyres used by the various teams.
22 April 1997 Williams and McLaren joinly announced that Hadrian Newey will start working for McLaren as Technical Director on 1 August. Newey will not now take Williams to court with regards to his job. Newey had a contract with Williams which was due to expire in 1999.
21 April 1997 The next hearing of the trial for Senna's death, which was supposed to take place immediately before the San Marino GP, has been postponed to the 6th of May. Bernie Ecclestone and Damon Hill should have been in the witness box, instead, Passarini, Tosetto and Del Monte, consultants for the magistrates, will be heard.
18 April 1997 The Lola team has 11 days to find a new buyer or go into liquidation.
17 April 1997 New hearing at Senna's trial. Forghieri said that
there is evidence that immediately before the accident Senna's steering
wheel was moving abnormally both vertically and horizontally, possibly
by as much as 7 cm and had also become lower by a few cm. Lawyer
Dominioni for Williams-Head defence said that the steering wheel could
only move horizontally and vertically by a few mm and could not become
lower more than 1 cm. Passarini then replied that the range of the
movement of Senna's steering wheel can be calculated by the relative
position of the steering wheel to the instruments in Senna's cockpit
visible in the films and that the movement observed is certainly much
more than Dominioni claims and it is by no means normal for a F1 car.
FIA's lawyer Causo asked whether the car was still under Senna's control
when he lifted the foot from the brake and Lorenzini replied that it
certainly was and that Senna had lifted his foot from the accelerator in
two stages, showing that up to the last second he had been trying to
correct his trajectory, rather than brake.
In the afternoon William's experts Stirano and Minen presented their
theory of what happened. Starting from the Cineca elaboration, they
concluded that Senna had had a problem of oversteering on a bump just
before the accident and had tried to correct the trajectory by
counter-steering. Instead, the car tuned by 9 degrees too much to the
right and Senna tried desperately to brake.
Newey said that he will give his opinion only when he is called to the
witness box. He added that he is going to leave Williams and that he
might sue them. He said he's most likely to go to McLaren.
Next hearing will be on 24 April, just before the San Marino GP. Bernie
Eccleston will be present.
15 April 1997 New hearing at the trial for Senna's death. Patrick Head and Adrian Newey were present, but only to listen. The people heard today were Mauro Forghieri, Tommaso Carletti (formerly at Ferrari) and prof. Enrico Lorenzini, coordinator of legal tests. First to be heard was Forghieri, who presented technical details of the dynamics of the accident, but said that all the information comes from Williams' telemetry and the margin of error can be as large as 10%.
Second heard was Carletti. He said that the exam of the steering column has revealed that it had been wealded in a very unprofessional way and that it was already 70% cracked at the point where it was joined at the time of the accident.
Williams', FIA's and the track's defence at this point joined forced to claim that Carletti's results are completely different from what had been found before.
13 April 1997 The first lap of the Argentinian GP saw the retirment of M. Schumacher following a collision with Barrichello, who span after Schumacher himself touched his left tyre. Villeneuve won with a 3 stop strategy, despite a bout of sickness before the race, but the honour of Ferrari was kept alive by Irvine, who arrived second at 9 tenth of a second from Villeneuve after having also led the race for a few laps. The honour of the Schumacher family was kept alive by Ralf, who was third after a collision which took out team mate Fisichella. Herbert was fourth, Hakkinen fifth and Berger sixth. Several drivers were forced to retire, among which were Frentzen, Panis and Hill. Only 10 cars completed the race.
8 April 1997 Eric Broasley said that he's hoping to get the Lola team back into the Championship by the time of the San Marino GP (27 April).
3 April 1997 Senna's trial: Mr Spiga managed to find the right
type of connectors and could connect them to the Williams black box. At
this point Mr Stirano (Williams own black box expert) informed him that
a special ram card was required to read the data. The prosecution then
attacked Stirano and Williams for failing to inform the magistrates of
this fact earlier and for not providing one of these cards. Mr
Gandossi, Williams' lawyer, said that this fact was known already from
May 94. Stirato said that he will provide a ram card.
The film elaborated by Cineca was also presented at the trial. The
technical details on how it was produced were explained.
The trial will start again on 15 April, when Forghieri, Carletti and
Lorenzini will be heard. On 24 April Ecclestone will be heard at the
trial and Hill on the 28th, after the GP.
Last updated on 30 April 1997 by Federica Massagrande