Senna's Death Trial


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.


Article Date Menu F1 red car F1 red car Next Article