28 November 1997 The Belgian government has approved a law that bans tobacco advertising on the whole national territory without any exception. This means that tobacco advertising will not be allowed in the Belgian GP from 1999. The British government is currently being attacked over exempting motor racing from the tobacco advertising ban imposed on all other sports, especially since it was revealed that Bernie Ecclestone had donated 1,000,000 ukp to the British Labour party before the General Election. The Labour party has recently donated the money to a charity for cancer research. Next Thursday the EU representatives will meet in Bruxelles to discuss a total tobacco advertising ban in all 15 member states.
27 November 1997 Yesterday the 31st and last session concluded the trial for Senna's death. The verdict will be announced at 15.00 on the 16th of December by Dr Antonio Costanzo.
In the last hearing, the defense lawyers replied to the prosecution's comments. Colliva (Bendinelli and Poggi's defense) said that the difference in level in the track is not a factor in the accident because the car never left the ground. Since there is no causal relationship between the difference in level track/off-track area and the accident, Colliva asked for non-guilty verdict for both Bendinelli and Poggi. Landi (the other lawyer for Bendinelli and Poggi) reminded that at the time of building the wall at Tamburello nobody had had anything to say about it because it fitted the FIA regulations perfectly, even after the accidents of Alboreto, Berger and Patrese.
Dominioni (Williams' and Head's lawyer) criticised the prosecution's experts because they overlooked the instability of the car at the Tamburello in their reconstruction. The metallurgy expert had said that the steering column had signs of stress but it was not broken, therefore the prosecution's theory is proved wrong. Head's responsability in the accident is derived from the fact that he did not check the work on the steering column after it had been carried out. This is true according to Italian rules, but in England the rules are different and managers are not responsable for what their team members do. Dominioni asked for a non guilty verdict for Head for not having committed the fact. Stortoni asked the same thing for Newey using the same argument. Newey did not design the piece, there is no evidence that he ordered the modifications to the steering column and he is not even included in the Williams' team staff list.
Patrick Head, who had chosen not to answer in court, yesterday sent Dr Costanzo a written statement in which he disagrees with the prosecution's experts, mentions the bumps on the track and excludes that the steering column had signs of stress, as it was possible to see from Damon Hill's car, which was identical to Senna's and had been driven for a lot longer.
26 November 1997 A Portoguese tribunal has declared not valid the contract between Cascais council and the company which is taking care of the work of restructuration of the Estorial race track. This puts the return of the Portoguese GP to the F1 calendar in 1998 at risk, as FIA had said that the GP would only be run if the works are completed before the race.
24 November 1997 Niki Lauda said that Cuba might have its own F1 GP in the year 2000.
22 November 1997 Penultimate session of the trial for Senna's death with the prosecution's answers to the defense arguments. Passarini said that he agrees with the defense of the track that it is possible to have a off-track area combined with a escape route, but that the Tamburello is a very dangerous place where cars are put under considerable mechanical stress and there should have been an escape route, as well as a off-track area. He then disagreed with the track's management interpretation of the regulations which implies that an escape route would not be required in that position. The works carried out at Tamburello in 1989 were OK, but they could have been expanded by raising the off-track area by 30-40 cm to bring it within the regulation requirements to allow a level passage from the track to the off-track zone. The prosecution's calculations, which have been called approximative, are actually based on scale measurements.
Passarini went on to refute Williams' defense arguments. He said that it is not true that his consultants did not consider the hypothesis of instability, which can be responsible for one out of 50 times a car leaves the track. The track has been examined in detail and everybody is aware that there were violent collisions with the ground. Williams reconstruction is biased because it assumes that certain data, proved wrong by the telemetry, is real. One of these assumptions is that Senna tried to counter-steer to correct the over-steering, which is impossible to see in the telemetry and is therefore not proved at all. On the contrary, one of the most significant things about Senna's car is that with the decrease in lateral acceleration, the torsion exercised on the steering column gets to 0, which means that Senna stopped using the steering wheel. This was not because he wanted to try the best possible brake action, but because the column had broken at this point. If the steering column was still working, the torsion should be evident in the telemetry. It is legitimate to have doubts on when and where the steering column was modified, therefore there is no point in pointing out that Hill had an identical steering column. It is not possible to claim that the breaking of the steering column was an unpredictable fact and that there is no causal relationship between the accident and Senna's death because the failure of the steering column is the primary cause why the car left the track. Head and Newey, because of their roles inside Williams, cannot claim that quality control was not one of their responsabilities according the principle of assigning tasks to specialised personnel.
The session was concluded by the reply of Lanzi, Newey's defense lawyer. He said that the central point of their argument is that the prosecution cannot say what Newey should and should not have done. From none of the prosecution's arguments it appears that Newey was Senna's confident in terms of technical choices or security issues.
The other replies from the defense will be heard in the last hearing on 26th of November.
21 November 1997 Flavio Briatore (47) has left the management of the Benetton team and F1 after eight years. With him the team won two drivers championships and one constructors championship in 1994-95. Overall, the Benetton team has won 26 GPs while under Briatore's management.
21 November 1997 Goodyear's announcement that they will retire from F1 at the end of the 1998 season has caused several reactions in F1. Bridgestone accused Goodyear of being scared of the competition because Firestone (belonging to Brisgestone) has defeated Goodyear in the Cart series. Goodyear immediately replyed that they are pulling out of F1 because they want to concentrate all their resources on the cart series and IRL. McLaren is rumoured to want to get Bridgestone tyres in the 1998 F1 championship already. Pirelli has denied an interest in re-entering F1 soon.
20 November 1997 Goodyear has announced that it is to retire from F1 from the end of the 1998 season after 30 years (with 361 GPs won to date). Goodyear blamed the decision on the increased costs derived from the new regulations on tyres. Following Goodyear's announcement, Bernie Ecclestone has contacted Pirelli, Michelin and the Japanese Yokohama to assess their availability to provide tyres to F1 teams. Representatives of Pirelli have already met with members of the Ferrari team and there are rumours that ferrari will start using Pirelli tyres in 1999.
19 November 1997 Yesterday Patrick Head's lawyers took the stand in the last session for the defense in Senna's death trial.
Dominioni tactic was to try and destroy the prosecution's arguments one by one. He accused Passarini of never having investigated whether phenomena of instability were present in Senna's William in relation to the characteristics of the Imola race track and to the settings of the car itself. Forghieri, Carletti and Lorenzini never took this possibility into consideration and never presented objective evidence.
Then Dominioni tackled specific issues. Senna's steering column was the same as Hill's and they had been designed before the start of the '94 F1 season. According to Allgass, consultant for the prosecution, it is not possible to say that a piece built with a security coefficient of 1 is badly made. The stress on the piece denounced by the prosecution should have become apparent at 350,000 cycles (a cycle is anything that causes wear on the piece), while the steering column, which has been checked after the first two GPs of the season, was only ever subject to up to 27,000 cycles. The question is why in the occasion of the accident there had been so much stress which had never been observed before?
The prosecution's exam is arbitrary becasue it is not based on objective facts but on presuppositions. There are internal contraddictions, especially Forghieri's statements on the tyre pressure, which have been proved to be wrong. The consultants first spoke of two bumps on the track, then one, then three, but they never mention the one which caused the loss of control of Senna's car at 11"24, as shown by the telemetry. As for Nosetto, he has been called as expert on himslef, which is clearly wrong. On the subject of the tyre pressure the prosecution's consultants relied on evaluations and not real data and they have been proved wrong by Goodyear. The whole reconstructions done by the prosecution's experts is wrong and must be redone. There are mistakes in the temporal and dynamic logic of the reconstruction of the accident, which starts at 11"24: following a heavy collision with another car Senna'scar shifted sharply and the Brazilian oversteered trying to correct the trajectory. According to the prosecution the steering column broke at this point because the car carried on straight and the driver did not try to steer in the 60 metres outside the track. In reality this did not happened because the wheels were not responding any more to the steering wheel, but because Senna was trying to obtain the best possible braking which can only be achieved with straight wheels. But the car had a variation of trajectory of 2-4 hundredths of a second which Senna could not manage.
It is pointless to compare the lap in the Friday practice session with that in which the accident occurred because the car settings were different. The films cannot be used either because the on-board camera was not rigidly fixed and there are phenomena of optical illusion. The steering column and wheel are flexible and the film images do not reflect reality. Alboreto's testimony cannot be trusted since he accuses Coulthard of not telling the truth. Williams, Head and Newey are not and were not general directors, they have areas of technical autonomy typical of F1, which is specialised to the extreme. Dominioni asked for Williams and Head to be found not guilty for not having committed the fact as the accident did not happened because the steering column broke.
Next session will be on Friday 21st November.
19 November 1997 Coulthard said he was "very disappointed" to have been ordered to let Hakkinen overtake him to win the GP at Jerez, especially because this option had never been discussed before the race. He added that he thought Hakkinen deserved a victory.
15 November 1997 Lanzi and Stortoni, Newey's defense, are the main characters in the 28th hearing in Senna's trial. Passarini has asked for one year of jail for Newey.
Lanzi argued that the prosecution failed to take into account the role of Young and Fisher, the two Williams technicians who, according to O'Rourke, carried out the calculations for the modifications to the steering column. Newey had nothing to do with the steering column and only learnt about it after the accident. He is being accused on the basis of a presumed behaviour within a non specified role. The evidence of Newey's innocence lies with Young and Fisher, whom the prosecution, and not the defense, should have called to testify. Even admitting that the steering column broke, there is no evidence that there is a relationship between this fact and the impact with the wall. Newey must be aquitted for not having committed the fact.
Stortoni said that the prosecution's argument is that Newey is guilty for not checking the modifications, as he never worked on the steering column, but there is no evidence that he ordered that work to be done. In fact when Williams ordered an internal inquiry on the accident, Newey was not called. It is therefore impossible to assume that Newey failed to do his duty, because obviously that is not what Williams perceived his duty to be. The work on Senna's car had been divided and assigned to several departments and, while there is such a role as a coordinator, there also is the principle of assigning a job to a specialised professional. This principle excludes the subsequent checking by a team leader. There also is a strong element of risk connected with motor racing.
Tuesday Newey's lawyers (Dominioni and Gandossi) will conclude the sessions for the defense.
14 November 1997 The BAT (British American Tobacco) group (Lucky Strike, HB, Player's, 555) are rumoured to have bought the Tyrrel F1 team. This would allow tobacco to be advertised in F1 without the permission of the government. Ken Tyrrell has so far denied that the sale has gone through, but has admitted of having received "offers of investment in the F1 team" and is now evaluating them. The Labour government in Great Britain is currently caught in a storm after it was revealed that Ecclestone had donated considerable amounts of money to the Labour party, who subsequently exempted motor racing from the ban on tobacco advertising.
13 November 1997 New session for the defence at the Senna death trial. The defense strategy of the lawyers for the management of the race track and for Roland Bruynseraede consisted of heavily attacking Nosetto, one of the prosecution consultants.
Causo (Bruynseraede's lawyer) said that the personality of the experts and consultants employed by the prosecution has strongly conditioned the trial. Nosetto was director of the Imola race track until 1998 and contraddicts his own work by saying that the track structures were not regular. If the prosecution argument is accepted, then the whole of the Imola race track should be destroyed and rebuilt.
Landi (lawyer for Sagis) said that Bendinelli and Poggi have had operational roles after 1980, that is to say when the changes to the track, requested and designed by Nosetto, had already been approved and had already started. Their activity has always been subject to the approval of FIA.
Tomorrow Newey's lawyers (Lanzi and Stortoni) will take the stand. The prosecution has asked for one year detention with parole for Newey.
12 November 1997 The Senna trial. Yesterday the defense took the stand to reply to Passarini's prosecution summary and request for verdict. First was Bonetti, defense lawyer (and nephew) of Poggi, who was track director at the time. Bonetti said that the 1st of May 1997 was poggi's last day of work and should had retired immediately afterwoards. It was supposed to be a day of celebration for him, the apex of a carreer started in 1973 as track inspector. He had work very hard and had managed to become the track director, therefore he cannot be happy that he is to be found not guilty just because the fact that the track surface was uneven is not a crime. Poggi was a very scrupolous manager, but all his work was under the control of international authorities, therefore his responsability is limited. His role must be ethically reinstated, therefore Bonetti asked for full discharge for Poggi because he had no fault whatsoever of what happened.
Colliva then proceeded to destroy the prosecution consultants. In particular Nosetto's exams and tests were full of cointraddictions and have been proved wrong six times on the account that the fron tyres of Senna's car had lifted. There were no changes of level on the part ouside the tack, only a very smmall bump. The line created by the defense experts, on the other hand, shows that senna went out with the front and rear right tyres and could not have lifted. The car lost its balance in the passage from the track to the grass, but this would not have prevented Senna from braking. Colliva then accused the prosecution consultants of not having used precise measurements in their calculations.
11 November 1997 Michael Schumacher was found guilty of ramming Villeneuve's car, but FIA officials thought that the manouvre was instinctive and not premeditated, therefore th eonly penalty imposed on the German driver was to cancel his second position in the Drivers' Championship. Ferrari retains all its points in the Constructors' Championship. In the same hearing FIA decided that Williams and McLaren ahd not agreed the outcome of the last race of the season.
7 November 1997 Jarno trulli will be driving for Prost for the next two season. his team mate is Olivier Panis.
7 November 1997 New session at the trial for Senna's death. Passarini asked that Frank Williams and the management of the race track at Imola should be considered not guilty. He then asked for one year (with parole) for Head and Newey, who modified the steering column and caused the accident.
Of the six of the people under ivestigation only lawyer Bendinelli were present at this session. First the prosecution examined in detail the responsability of the Williams team, then the death of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna between 30 April and 1 may 1994. Passarini repeated his thesis that Senna lost control of the car because the steering column had broken, then recalled the "equivocal" behaviour ("the most sadly farcical moment of the investigation") of FOCA in making available the images from Senna's on-board camera which stop nine tenths of a second before the impact. Passarini also reserved the right to ask the magistrates to evaluate whether to bring charges of false testimony against Andy james, Eddie Baker and Alan Woollard, TV technicians for FOCA.
Passarini went on to say that Senna's accident cannot be caused by a human error. He reminded the audience that two independent labs had reached the same conclusion that the steering column was showing stress signs on three quarters of the circumference and on 40% of the section and that the Williams team themselves agreed with these results. Senna was holding in his hands a steering wheel inserted in a compromised element and it is not that important to determine exactly in which part of the track the column actually broke. The images from Senna's on-board camera show that the yellow button, which in lab trial is stable, lowered itself by 2.5 cm and nobody has been able to explain why. As for Williams simulations about the movemnet of the steering wheel, which according to Coulthard can move by 2 cm, quite a few errors have been found in the setip of the suimulations themselves. the fact that Senna was aware of the fact and had agreed to drive all teh same does not reduce the responsability of the people charged. There is criminal negligency in the work undertaken to modify the steering column.
Then Passarini moved to the request of verdicts for the people on trial. Head and Newey did not make the changes themselves, but it was their duty to instruct the technicians who did. Despite the fcat that insode the Williams team there was, and still is, a division of roles and tasks, this does not remove the responsability from Head and Newey, despite Williams' defence's attempt to move the responsability of security to lower levels. The position of Frank Williams is more delicate, as he cannot possibly have been totally alien to the technical choice, as he tried to make believe, but it is not possible to prove that he is competent on the matter. Passarini therefore asked that Frank Williams should be found not guilty.
Passarini then asked a non guilty verdict for Bendinelli (Sagis), Poggi (race track) and Bruynseraede (the FIA technician who approved the track) because in the case of tha latter two there is no direct causal link between their behaviour and Senna's death. Bendinelli is for the race track what Frank Williams is for his team: he must be foud not guilty for the same reason.
The penalties: The degree of fault of Head and Newey is not small, the error was very large, but there is the element the pressure that had been put on them by Senna, who was a demanding perfectionist. For them Passarini asked one year with parole.
Oreste, defense lawyer for Williams and Head, then replied that the request of a guilty verdict for the Williams technicians is based on hypotheses and none of them has a solid basis. He then accused Passarini of discussing the accident without mentioning the conditions of the track, the track surface and the bumps.
Roberto Landi, one of Sagis' lawyers, said he was happy with Passarini's conclusions, but that he would like the chance to prove that the track conditions had no influence on the accident.
Calcaterra, lawyer for the Senna family, who did not enter the trial, said that he cannot take a position, either positive or negative. It was an accurate analysis, he added, and it will be the verdict that will give an answer to the question of what happened to Ayrton Senna.
The defense will take the stand on the 11th of November.
7 November 1997 Prosecution magistrate Passarini said that some unnamed FOCA managers will be put under investigation by the magistrates of Bologna for giving false testimony during the trial for Senna's death.
7 November 1997 The trial for unauthorised modifications of the race track at Monza in 94 has finished. Enrico Ferrari (general director of Sias, the company which manages the track) and Giorgio Beghella Bartoli (works director) have been condamned to 6 months and 60 million lire fine each. Sergio Sensi (responsible for the offices) was found not guilty. Tomorrow another trial will start, brought about by the environmentalists who accuse the race track to cause sound pollution.
6 November 1997 Because of the French lorry drivers' strike, the World Motor Sport Council will meet at the Royal Automobil Club in London instead of Paris. The commettee will meet at 9.30am on the 11th of November to discuss M. Schumacher's collision with Villeneuve during the last GP of the season.
5 November 1997 The British government decided not to apply the tobacco advertising ban to motor racing, so that the British GP will not be affected. Anti-smoking groups have accused the government to allow the F1 big bosses to hold them at ransom.
4 November 1997 Ex-F1 driver Nicki Lauda called for new regulations that would allow drivers to be called out and disqualified from a race if they drive dangerously or if they are not being correct, much like the red card in a football match.
4 November 1997 Today Max Mosley and Marie Georgie Buffet (French minister for sport) will meet to try and solve the TV broadcast rights problem that lead to the French GP being dropped from the 1998 calendar.
3 November 1997 Jarno Trulli is most likely to be Prost's second driver for the nexy two years. Apparently the announcement has not been given yet only because of paperwork problems. The only three drives still available are a Tyrrell one and the two Minardi's.
Last updated on 28 November 1997 by Federica Massagrande