Formula 1 design guru Adrian Newey questions whether Ayrton Senna really died as a result of a steering column failure, despite a lengthy investigation to that conclusion.
The Italian courts claimed that a poorly designed column on the Newey designed FW16 resulted in the Brazilian’s death, after he veered off track and hit the barriers at the high-speed Tamburello corner during the 1994 Imola Grand Prix.
Newey, who admits he is still tormented by the crash, doesn’t believe the steering column was the cause of the accident and subsequent death.
“What happened that day, what caused the accident, still haunts me to this day,” he told the BBC’s Radio 5 Live.
“The steering column failure, was it the cause, or did it happen in the accident?
“All the data, all the circuit cameras, the on-board camera from Michael Schumacher’s car that was following, none of that appears to be consistent with a steering-column failure.
“The car oversteered initially and Ayrton caught that and only then did it go straight.
“But the first thing that happened was oversteer, in much the same way as you will sometimes see on a superspeedway in the States – the car will lose the rear, the driver will correct, and then it will go straight and hit the outside wall, which doesn’t appear to be consistent with a steering-column failure.”
Nobody was ever prosecuted for Senna’s death, despite the courts putting blame on Williams’s Patrick Head, as the verdict came 13-years after the crash – which surpassed Italian law at the time which states a verdict must be presented within seven years and six months.
