
15 May 1997 Prosecution magistrate Passarini was completely
unconvinced by FOCA's official explanation of why Senna's on-board
camera stopped working before the accident happened. He declares
himself utterly convinced that the film given to them is incomplete and
that there is ground for a charge of hiding evidence.
The images from Senna's on-board camera have been given to the
magistrates 5 months late and stop just 9 tenths of a second before the
impact with the Tamburello wall. The official excuse is that nothing
was happening with Senna, so they decided to move to Berger's on-board
camera. The strange things is that there are 14 seconds of gray lines
between stopping the feed from Senna's camera and starting the feed from
Berger's. In the first of these 14 seconds the accident took place.
Eddie Baker (FOCA's TV responsible) said that the gray feed is due to
disturbed transmission and that it was one of the reasons why they
decided to move to Berger's camera. He said that the decision to change
to Berger's camera was taken 10 second before the accident. He added
that he never told Ecclestone of the existence of the images and that
they were not given to the magistartes immediately because they did not
show the accident. At this point Passarini pointed out that the images
were given to Williams in May and that Ecclestone himself had to ask
Williams for a copy of them.
Alan Woolard (FOCA's TV director) said that he took the decision to go
to Katayama's camera (not Berger) and Passarini asked why, since nothing
was going on either with Berger or Katayama at that moment. Woolard
said he does not know why, that perhaps it was technical problem and
that sometimes images different from those requested are sent.
Passarini reminded Woolard that in 95 he had said he had the images of
the accident from Senna's camera. Giancarlo Tommasetti (RAI's director)
said that FOCA never sent them the feed from Senna's camera. FIA's
external relations officier (Francesco Longanesi cattani) said that in
95 he had got confused when he too said to have seen images from Senna's
camera a few metres before the accident. He said that he saw images
from another car and confused them with those from Senna's camera.
The trial will restart on 2 June, when Hill will testify.
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