31 May 1997 Ferrari is celebrating its 50 years of production with a series of shows and manifestations across Italy. Several classic models are present and so are people who contributed to the Ferrari legend.
31 May 1997 Bernie Ecclestone said that given the new European regulations banning tobacco advertising, he might move most of the European GPs to Asia. According to Ecclestone only the Italian, German, Monaco and Portuguese GPs would be sure not to be removed from the calendar.
30 May 1997 Damon Hill denied recent rumours that he's not happy at Arrows and wants to change team. Hill will testify at the trial for Senna's death on Monday, since he was Senna's team mate at the time.
30 May 1997 Gerhard Berger is recovering after surgery for an infection in the jaw. The driver hopes to be fit to compete in the Canadian GP.
28 May 1997 M. Schumacher suffered an accident during tests at the Silverstone circuit, when the right back suspension of his F310B failed. The driver was shaken but unhurt.
28 May 1997 The German economics magazine Wirtschaftswoche reported that Luciano Benetton is to sell his F1 team to cut costs. This was promptly denied by Laura Pollini, spokeperson for Benetton, who said there is no intention whatsoever of selling the team and that they have never had any contacts with Wirtschaftswoche.
27 May 1997 Both Villeneuve and Hill are rumoured to be keeping in touch with Prost for a possible drive next year.
24 May 1997 The Spanish GP saw Villeneuve snatch the driver championship back from M. Schumacher. The Canadian won the race while team mate Frentzen finished outside the points. Panis gave another podium to the Prost team by finishing second and Alesi proved that Benetton might be on the way out of its crisis by finishing third. M. Schumacher was fourth, despite an excellent start when he managed to go from 7th on the grid to third in the space of a few metres. Herbert was fifth for Sauber and Coulthard sixth for McLaren. R. Schumacher stalled his engine and caused the start of the race to be cancelled. As a consequence he was forced to start from the back of the grid. This allowed Berger to retake his sixth place on the grid, as he had stalled before the parade lap and should have started from the back. There never was any competition for the lead, despite Panis managing to close the gap between himself and Villeneuve considerably towards the end of the race. M. Schumacher reached up with Alesi but never was in the condition of battling for the third place. Tyres were again one of the most important factors affecting performance, as the race started with a 50% chance of rain. It was another unlucky day for Damon Hill, who suffered an engine failure while in fifth position on the 18th lap.
21 May 1997 Morbidelli will officially substitute Larini at Sauber from the GP of Barcelona for the rest of the season. Larini is back at Ferrari as test driver.
21 May 1997 Ex-F1 driver Carlos Reutemann said he is preparing to run for the presidency of Argentina as candidate for the Peronist party.
21 May 1997 It looks like the GP on 26 October will take place in Jerez (Spain). There might be a new GP in Portugal, if the works on the track are completed satisfactorily by 31 August, on 9 November. All this is still to be confirmed. Ecclestone needs the agreement of all the F1 teams to introduce a new GP in the calendar.
17 May 1997 Today at the racing track in Monza "historical" racing cars built before 1986 will compete in the 48th InterEuropean Cup sponsored by Chrysler. Such cars as Lauda's Ferrari from 74 and Andretti's Lotus from 78 will be present. Older cars such as Alfas from 47 onwards will be there.
17 May 1997 It looks like the last GP of the season is back at Estoril with a new date of 9 November, after assurance from the Portoguese government that all required improvements to the track will have been carried out by then.
16 May 1997 FIA has distributed a new revised list of GPs in which the Portoguese GP has been substitued with a European GP to be run in Jerez, Spain.
15 May 1997 There is confusion as to whether the last GP of the season will be run in portugal or at Jerez in Spain. The Circuit of Estorial allegedly is not ready, but this has been denied by the Circuit officials.
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.
15 May 1997 Morbidelli will test a Sauber car. If the test has a positive result, Morbidelli will take Larini's place from Barcelona onwards for the rest of the season. It is quite sure that Morbidelli will replace Larini, as Sauber has already had a seat designed for him.
14 May 1997 New hearing at the trial for Senna's death.
Liutenant Andrea Hallgas (military aviation expert on materials) and
prof. Giampaolo Cammarota (lecturer in metallurgy at the University of
Bologna) said that the steering column broke because it was badly
designed. According to the Williams experts the steering column broke
only after hitting the wall, because the torsion required to break it
was only reached at the time of the impact, according to the
telemetry.
Hallgas and Cammarota disagreed on what caused the steering column to
break. According to Hallgas, the column broke where it was joined
because the difference in section between the two joined pieces caused
the stress to concentrate there, not because it had been badly welded.
According to Hallgas the resistence to stress of the column was reduced
to one third at tht point of joint and a crack corresponding to 70% of
the circumpherence (or 35-40% of the section) was present before the
column broke.
Cammarota disagreed with Hallgas on the size of the initial crack (more
than 60% of the section according to him) which lead to the breakage and
said that the quality of the welding was one of the causes of the
breakage of the column.
The Williams experts (Vitali and Suppo) agree with Hallgas and disagree
with Cammarota, saying that Hallgas used magnification up to 900 times,
while Cammarota only used magnification up to 70 times. According to
them the crack in the column was about 21% of the section and certainly
no more than 40%.
On 28 May new images from Senna's in-car camera, clearer than those
already seen, will be shown.
13 May 1997 After a long stop caused by the lawyers' strike, the trial for Senna's manslaughter reastarts today.
11 May 1997 The first wet race of the season was won by M. Schumacher, who stormed away at the start and mantained an unchallanged lead until the end (he had a 11 seconds lead at the end of the second lap!), while team mate Irvine was third. Today's result put M. Schumacher at the top of the Driver Championship table and Ferrari at the top of the Constructors Championship table, with a lead of 8 points over Williams. It was Ferrari's first victory in Montecarlo since 1981 with Gilles Villeneuve. Wonderful performance from Barrichello, second, who gave the Stewart team its first Championship points. Fourth was Panis, 5th Salo (first Championship points for Tyrrel) and 6th Fisichella, who duelled with Panis for 3rd place for several laps. The Williams teams decided to take a calculated gamble by starting with slick tyres. This didn't pay off, as M. Schumacher (on wet tyres) first lapped Villeneuve (who retired shortly afterwards) on lap 16 and then Frentzen on lap 29, despite Frantzen having changed to wet tyres on lap 6. Villeneuve said aftewards that they had been given a forecast of rain drying out shortly, which proved to be inaccurate. Frentzen eventually retired when he hit the kerb and bounced off to hit the wall. Bad day for Benetton, with Alesi out and Berger finishing out of the points. Both McLaren cars went out when Coulthard and Hakkinen collided. A bad day for Hill too (out on lap 4 after a pile up) and Herbert (lap 10). On lap 46 M. Schumacher missed the bend and went straight, but managed not to hit anything and to keep the engine running, so that he could rejoin the race as leader. Because of the weather condition the pace of the race was slow and the two hours, rather than the 76 laps, where reached. The severe weather condition was similar to last year in Spain where M. Schumacher won, proving his ability as a wet track driver.
10 May 1997 Frentzen will be starting the Monaco GP in pole position. M. Schumacher will be sharing with him the front line, while Villeneuve and Fisichella will be on the second line.
8 May 1997 Herbert was fastest in the free trials before the Monaco GP. Frentzen, the winner of the San Marino GP, was forced out when he hit the guard-rail.
8 May 1997 Mosely allegedly said that he has no intention of bringing F1 back to the USA, but he intends to go into Asia, in particular Korea, Taiwan and China.
7 May 1997 Both damon Hill and Michael Schumacher will testify at the trial for Senna's death in June. Bernie Ecclestone will be heard in next week's hearing.
6 May 1997 John Barnard, formerly of Ferrari, has agreed to join the Arrows team as technical director. He replaces Frank Dernie.
6 May 1997 Due to the lawyers' strike, there will be no hearings in the trial for Senna's death today and tomorrow. Today at 5pm a rememberance mass will be celebrated for Senna in the Carrobiolo church in Monza.
6 May 1997 To improve safety during the Montecarlo GP the curve of the swimming pool bend has been modified by 3 degrees. This achieves two results: improves visibility for the drivers (before it was a blind bend) and forces them to go down one gear, thus reducing their speed. This modification increases the length of the track by 39 meters to a total of 3,367 meters.
1 May 1997 On 28 May 1947 the first car produced by Ferrari, driven by Franco Cortese, won a race at the Caracalla circuit (Rome). To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ferrari, from 30 May for 1 month, a series of manifestations will take place in Rome, Modena, Maranello and Fiorano. Over 3000 rare Ferrari cars from all over the world will take part and will be driven by collectors and champions of the past. Phil Hill will be driving the 156, John Surtees the 158, Nicki Lauda the T2, Jody Scheckter the T4. Also present will be the 375, the first ever Ferrari car to win a F1 GP (GP of Great Britain, July 1951) with Froilan Gonzales. All cars, except from the ones currently involved in the F1 season, will be exhibited for free at the Stadio dei Marmi until midnight on 31 May. Luca di Montezemolo had hoped to take all the cars to St. Peter's Square in Rome to show them to the Pope, but the Pope will be leaving for a journey on that same day.
Last updated on 31 May 1997 by Federica Massagrande