Senna's Death Trial


4 June 1997 New chapter of the Senna's death trial. Yesterday the reconstruction produced by Mike Guttila was shown. Guttila is an American engineer specialist in this kind of reconstructions for racing teams (F1 and kart). The reconstraction was discussed by ingeneer Diego Milen and according to Williams, it shows that Senna's car oversteered twice forcing the driver to correct the trajectory, which eventually cause the car to go off the track and hit the wall. The conclusion is that even if Senna had tried to steer the car would have gone out at the Tamburello.
Prosecution magistrate Passarini contested teh validity of the data (such as temperature and tyre pressure) used for the reconstruction. Moreover the prosecution pointed out that the model used for the reconstruction is completely flat, while the slopes in the Imola track are of several degrees and would influence a car travelling at 310 km/h. As a last point Passarini pointed out that in Guttila's reconstruction Senna had the best time for the pole position on Saturday, while in reality Senna had had the best time on the Friday and on Saturday had not done a complete qualifying session because of Ratzenberger's death. This caused some embarassment in the Williams representatives present.
Sagis' defense also contested the validity of the data used in the reconstruction, which they defined arbitrary and not verified and, through lawyer Bendinelli, they referred to teh data on the depth of the bumps, which Williams had obtained from non-official sources. The other impotant element of this hearing was the film given in April by FOCA, which is Betacam and therefore of sharper detail than the one already examined, which is VHS. The Betacam film is very important, according to the prosecution, because given the sharper detail it could prove whether the steering wheel was shaking in Senna's hands before the accident, or not.
Alboreto himself was allegedly shocked when he saw the Betacam film (after he testified), because he noticed the horizontal movement of the steering wheel. The trial will restart on the 25th of June, with the conclusion of Williams' demonstrations.


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