25 June 1997 The trial for Senna's death restarts today. This is
the 13th hearing and six witnesses for Williams defence will testify.
These are technicians Pilcher, Nightingale, Wells, Wise, Scoins and
O'Rourke. None of these have ever held positions of responsability at
Williams and it is likely that some of these people might not be present
because of Sunday's french GP. A big surprise came yesterday from a
program broadcast on the Italian channel Italia 1 titled "Processo
Senna: il Buco Nero" (Senna Trial: the Black Hole) and produced by
Alessandro Mischi, Giorgio Teruzzi and Luca Budel. The program reviewed
all the evidence presented so far and then revealed the existence of a
"superwitness", a French engineer (almost certainly from Renault) whose
name is known by the magistrates, but who has never testified so far.
This is the person who, after the accident, downloaded the telemetry
data from the black box given to him by Charlie Whiting (technical
responsible for FIA) and who would still have the original data.
The black box in question is the one connected to the Renault engine
which, once removed, was (strangely) immediately reused for testing.
This person has never been back in Italy since 1th May 1994 and stopped
following the Williams team in the GPs.
Another point raised by the program was derived from images of Damon
Hill during the pit stop. A Williams technician can be seen removing
something from the front of the car, perhaps a sensor. Another
technician can be seens rushing to the car to check something on the
front of the car. This is only allowed for someone wearing fireproof
clothing, which the technician was not wearing (in fact Williams was
fined 10,000 dollars for this infringiment). This fact too has never
been discussed afterwards.
After today's hearing, next session will be next Monday (with the
defense of Poggi and Bendinelli of Sagis) and then in July: on the 3rd
(M. Schumacher might be called), on the 4th and the 9th (prof. Del
Monte and ingeneer Nosetto, experts for the magistrates).
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