On Wednesday, May 1st, the death of Ayrton Senna will be 30 years old. The pilot hit a curve in the Imola circuitin Italy, during the San Marino GP 1994 of Formula 1, and crashed into a concrete wall at a speed of more than 200 km/h. At the time, the Brazilian was rescued, but did not survive his injuries.
One of the main points of the accident was the rupture of the steering column of the FW16 car that Senna was driving. The allegation at the time was that the driver was uncomfortable in the cockpit and, to resolve this, Williams engineers decided to change the angle of the bar, welding a thinner tube between two parts of the bar.
The investigation showed that this modification resulted in a poorly made weld, which would have contributed to Senna’s accident being fatal. As a result, six people were indicted by Italian justice in the “Senna Case”: Patrick Head, Frank Williams, Adrian Newey, Roland Bruynsereade, Giorgio Poggi It is Federico Bendinelli.
The first instance trial took place in 1997 and no one was arrested. The second trial was in 1999 and also cleared the group. In 2007, Italy’s Supreme Court concluded that Patrick Head was responsible for manslaughter, but the Englishman did not serve time because the case was already more than 10 years old. See below where each of the accused is:
Patrick Head is one of the founders of Williams and ex-husband of the Brazilian journalist Betise Assumpção, who was Senna’s advisor. The engineer was the team’s technical director and remained at the team between 1977 and 2011. In 2019, he returned as a technical consultant. Now 77, Head does not travel to races, but stays at the factory in Grove, UK.
Sir Frank Williams, as he was known, co-founded the Williams team alongside Head. The Brit started in the category as a mechanic, became a driver and then managed to create his own team. The businessman became paraplegic in March 1986 after a car accident in France, and remained in charge of the team with the help of a wheelchair until 2012, when he was replaced by his daughter Claire. Williams died in November 2021 at age 79, and the cause of death has not been released.
Engineer Adrian Newey is the only one on the list who remains fully involved in Formula 1. The 65-year-old Briton has been a designer for Red Bull Racing since 2005, with a contract valid until next year. However, amid speculation about the future, the engineer could leave the team at the end of the season and move to Ferrari or Aston Martin.
Newey also released the book “How to Build a Car” in November 2017 and spoke about Senna’s death: “I was one of the engineers responsible for a team that designed a car in which a great man was killed. Regardless of whether the steering column caused the accident or not, there is no escaping the fact that something bad should never have entered the car,” he said in the piece.
Belgian Roland Bruynsereade was a Safety Inspector for the International Automobile Federation (FIA) when Senna’s accident occurred and was responsible for authorizing the start of the race or possible interruptions to the circuit. In 1995, he left Formula 1 to take over as Competition Director of the International Touring Car Championship (ITC) and, later, of the German Touring Car Championship (DTM), where he remained until 2007. Currently, Bruynsereade is 84 years old and There are no records of functions performed by him after the period.
Giorgio Poggi was the director of the Imola circuit. New controllers of the race track were sought out by the report from Estadãobut they were unable to inform Poggi’s whereabouts.
Federico Bendinelli is a lawyer and was the administrator of the company Sagis, which controlled the Imola circuit at the time. The Italian was with the organization from 1978 to 2006 and, after that period, he was elected president of the Automobile Club Bologna, a non-profit Italian motorsport organization.
