Death of Ayrton Senna

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Ayrton Senna da Silva (IPA: [ˈayɛrton ˈsɛnnɐ dɐ ˈsilvɐ]) (March 21, 1960–May 1, 1994), better known as Ayrton Senna, was a Brazilian Formula One triple world champion. He died whilst leading the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix at Imola.

[edit] Background

Ayrton Senna's Fatal Accident in San Marino

In 1994, Senna left the ailing McLaren team for the top team at the end of 1993, Williams-Renault. After the banning of active suspension, Williams started the season trying to close the gap to Benetton. Senna failed to finish his first two races in Interlagos and Aida, despite taking two superb pole positions against the Benetton at both events. On May 1 1994, he took part in his third race for the team, the San Marino Grand Prix at the Imola circuit. Although he would not finish it, Senna started his last race from pole position.

That weekend, he was particularly upset by two events. On the Friday, during the afternoon qualifying session, Senna's protégé, the then newcomer Rubens Barrichello, was involved in a serious accident that prevented him from competing in the race. Senna visited Barrichello in the hospital (he jumped the wall at the back of the facility after being barred from visitation by the doctors) and was convinced that safety standards had to be reviewed. On Saturday, the death of Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger in practice forced Senna's safety concerns and caused Senna to consider retiring. Ironically, he spent his final morning meeting fellow drivers, determined by Ratzenberger's accident to take on a new responsibility to re-create a Driver's Safety group to increase safety in Formula One. As the most senior driver, he was offered the role of leader in this effort.

[edit] Accident

"Tamburello" corner in 1994

On Sunday, Pedro Lamy and J. J. Lehto were involved in a starting-line accident. Track officials deployed the safety car to slow down the field and allow the debris from the starting accident to be removed. The cars proceeded under the safety car for 6 laps. On lap 7, the second lap after the restart, Senna's car veered off the track at Tamburello corner, slammed into an unprotected concrete barrier and bounced back towards the track. Telemetry shows he left the track at 310 km/h (193 mph) and was able to slow the car down to 218 km/h (135 mph) in less than two seconds before hitting the wall.

After Senna's car stopped, Senna sat motionless in the cockpit of the Williams FW16. False hopes were briefly raised when his head moved slightly. Professor Sidney Watkins, a world-renowned neurosurgeon and Formula One Safety Delegate and Medical Delegate, head of the Formula One on-track medical team, who performed an on site tracheotomy on Ayrton Senna, reported:

"He looked serene. I raised his eyelids and it was clear from his pupils that he had a massive brain injury. We lifted him from the cockpit and laid him on the ground. As we did, he sighed and, although I am totally agnostic, I felt his soul departed at that moment."

[edit] Autopsy

Senna was only 34 years old. Senna's injuries were caused by the front right tire with attached suspension piece, which became loose on impact, hit Senna on the head and pierced his visor, and caused a fatal cranial trauma. Images of Senna's battered helmet show a puncture occurred at the top of the visor, just over his right eye. This led to the now most commonly accepted theory that one of the car's suspension bars had come loose and impacted with Senna's head.

The FIA and Italian authorities still maintain that Senna was not killed instantly, but rather died in hospital, to where he had been rushed by helicopter after an emergency tracheotomy and IV administration were performed on track. There is an ongoing debate as to why Senna was not declared dead at the track. Under Italian law when a person dies at a sporting event, that death must be investigated, causing the sporting event to be cancelled. The Director of the Oporto (Portugal) Legal Medicine Institute, Professor Pinto da Costa, has stated the following:

"From the ethical viewpoint, the procedure used for Ayrton's body was wrong. It involved dysthanasia, which means that a person has been kept alive improperly after biological death has taken place due to brain injuries so serious that the patient would never have been able to remain alive without mechanical means of support. There would have been no prospect of normal life and relationships. Whether or not Ayrton was removed from the car while his heart was beating or whether his supply of blood had halted or was still flowing, is irrelevant to the determination of when he died.

The autopsy showed that the crash caused multiple fractures at the base of the cranium, crushing the forehead and rupturing the temporal artery with haemorrhage in the respiratory passages. It is possible to resuscitate a dead person immediately after the heart stops through cardio-respiratory processes. The procedure is known as putting the patient on the machine. From the medical-legal viewpoint, in Ayrton's case, there is a subtle point: resuscitation measures were implemented.

From the ethical point of view this might well be condemned because the measures were not intended to be of strictly medical benefit to the patient but rather because they suited the commercial interest of the organisation. Resuscitation did in fact take place, with the tracheotomy performed, while the activity of the heart was restored with the assistance of cardio-respiratory devices. The attitude in question was certainly controversial. Any physician would know there was no possibility whatsoever of successfully restoring life in the condition in which Senna had been found." ^[1]

Professor Jose Pratas Vital, Director of the Egas Moniz hospital in Lisbon, a neurosurgeon and Head of the Medical Staff at the Portuguese GP, offers a different opinion:

"The people who conducted the autopsy stated that, on the evidence of his injuries, Senna was dead. They could not say that. He had injuries which lead to his death, but at that point the heart may still have been functioning. Medical personnel attending an injured person, and who perceive that the heart is still beating, have only two courses of action: One is to ensure that the patient's respiratory passages remain free, which means that he can breathe. They had to carry out an emergency tracheotomy. With oxygen, and the heart beating, there is another concern, which is loss of blood. These are the steps to be followed in any case involving serious injury, whether on the street or on a racetrack. The rescue team can think of nothing else at that moment except to assist the patient, particularly by immobilising the cervical area. Then the injured person must be taken immediately to the intensive care unit of the nearest hospital". ^[2]

Rogério Morais Martins Micropower states that:

"According to the first clinical bulletin read by Dr. Maria Teresa Fiandri at 4.30 p.m. Ayrton Senna had brain damage with haemorrhaged shock and deep coma. However, the medical staff did not note any chest or abdomen wound. The haemorrhage was due to the rupture of the temporal artery. The neurosurgeon who examined Ayrton Senna at the hospital mentioned that the circumstances did not call for surgery because the wound was generalised in the cranium. At 6.05 p.m. Dr. Fiandri read another communiqué, her voice shaking, announcing that Senna was dead. At that stage he was still connected to the equipment that maintained his heartbeat.

The release by the Italian authorities of the results of Ayrton Senna's autopsy, revealing that the driver had died instantaneously during the race at Imola, ignited still more controversy. Now there were questions about the reactions of the race director and the medical authorities. Although spokespersons for the hospital had stated that Senna was still breathing on arrival in Bologna, the autopsy on Ratzenberger [who died the day before] indicated that death had been instantaneous. Under Italian law, a death within the confines of the circuit would have required the cancellation of the entire race meeting.

That in turn, would have prevented the death of Ayrton Senna.

The relevant Italian legislation stipulates that when a death takes place during a sporting event, it should be immediately halted and the area sealed off for examination. In the case of Ratzenberger, this would have meant the cancellation of both Saturday's qualifying session and the San Marino Grand Prix on Sunday.

Medical experts are unable to state whether or not Ayrton Senna died instantaneously. Nevertheless, they were well aware that his chances of survival were slight. Had he remained alive, the brain damage would have left him severely handicapped. Accidents such as this are almost always fatal, with survivors suffering irreversible brain damage. This is due to the effects on the brain of sudden deceleration, which causes structural damage to the brain tissues. Estimates of the forces involved in Ayrton's accident suggest a rate of deceleration equivalent to a 30 metre vertical drop, landing head-first. Evidence offered at the autopsy revealed that the impact of this 208 km/h crash caused multiple injuries at the base of the cranium, resulting in respiratory insufficiency.

There was crushing of the brain (which was forced against the wall of the cranium causing oedema and haemorrhage, increasing intra-cranial pressure and causing brain death), together with the rupture of the temporal artery, haemorrhage in the respiratory passages and the consequent heart failure.

There are two opposing theories on the issue of whether the drivers were still alive when they were put in the helicopters that carried them to hospital. Assuming both Ratzenberger and Senna had died instantaneously, the race organisers might have delayed any announcement in order to avoid being forced to cancel the meeting, thus protecting their financial interests.

Had the meeting been cancelled, Sagis - the organisation which administers the Imola circuit - stood to lose an estimated US$6.5 million." ^{[3] [4]}

The FIA dismisses that conception as an unfounded conspiracy theory.

Changes of the circuit

The FIA immediately investigated the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola, and the track's signature Tamburello turn, was changed into a left-right chicane.

In 2000, Senna was posthumously inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.

[edit] Accident analysis

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In 2004, a television documentary by National Geographic called Seismic Disaster: The Death of Ayrton Senna was screened worldwide. The programme considered the available data from Senna's car to reconstruct the sequence of events that led to the fatal crash. The programme concluded that an unusually long safety car period had reduced the pressures in Senna's tyres, thereby lowering the car. As the car entered the Tamburello bend, it bottomed-out and the loss of the ground effect led to a sudden reduction in downforce, and hence grip. As Senna instinctively corrected the resultant slide, the downforce and grip suddenly returned, and Senna effectively drove off the circuit. The programme came to the conclusion that if Senna's reactions had actually been slower, he might have survived the crash.

To many within the F1 world including drivers of that era who had raced at Imola, the conclusions drawn from low tyre pressure as a cause of the accident seem highly implausible. Telemetry recorded that Senna took the bend at 190 mph on lap 6 with cold tyres. The information released in the trial stated that Senna started the race with 86 litres of fuel and had planned a two stop race strategy, one less than Schumacher who started the race lighter on a 3 stop strategy. The theory that low tyre pressure caused the crash was defeated in court when Stefano Stefanini, head of Bologna's traffic accident unit, testified that Senna, with a heavier car than Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill, recorded a time of 1.24.887 on the sixth lap, Ayrton's only lap at race speed and the 3rd fastest lap of the race. Alboreto and other drivers of the era claimed that given Senna's lap time, his tyres would have been at race temperature by the 7th lap and could not have been a factor in the crash.

The ban on active suspension affected Williams more than any other team as it was the key development that had helped make the Williams car the class of the field from 1991, 1992 and 1993. 1994 the Williams drivers complained of severe handling problems and a twitchy rear-end. The FW16's new rear end was introduced at Imola. It was ironic that at the beginning of 1994 Senna himself told the press that he would be surprised if there would be no large accidents that year. He referred to the fact that after the wide "white label" 26 inch Goodyear slicks were banned for 1993 (replaced by "yellow label"), now the technology at the very core of the cars, the science around which they had been based for the last few years (active suspension, traction control and ABS) was also banned for 1994. He surmised that the cars would have trouble staying on the road, which is exactly what was observed at the beginning of 1994. J. J. Lehto damaged his vertebrae at Silverstone in January and Jean Alesi broke his neck in pre-season testing, prior to Ratzenberger's and Senna's fatal accidents at Imola. During qualifying for the next race at Monaco, Wendlinger suffered an accident which left him comatose for months; Ratzenberger's replacement, Andrea Montermini, broke his feet in the Simtek in Barcelona, and Pedro Lamy broke both knee-caps in testing at Silverstone in May. None of these accidents was deemed to be caused by driver error, although there is no evidence to suggest that the accidents were caused by the ban on driver aids.

There are other factors – Senna did not like the position of the steering column relative to his seating position and had repeatedly asked for it to be changed. At Imola Senna found himself in a car with his team's engineers struggling to cope and adapt to the ban of active suspension. Patrick Head and Adrian Newey agreed to Senna's request to shorten the FW16's wheelbase, but there was no time to manufacture a shortened steering shaft. The existing shaft was instead cut, shortened, and welded back together with reinforcing plates. Many surmise, based on comparing hours of onboard video footage from Brazil and Imola that the movement of the steering wheel during the race at Imola was completely abnormal. Senna on his final lap is seen turning the wheel left to full lock with no movement of the front wheels. Others have raised suspicion at what can clearly be seen on the onboard footage as Senna looking down onto his steering wheel seconds before entering Tamburello.

The irony of the on board video available from Senna's car is that the final seconds of footage are missing. The approximately 1.5 seconds of remaining video which would have provided a definite answer as to the cause of Senna's death were lost in an act of astounding coincidence when the TV race director decided to switch camera signals at the very instant the Williams started to leave the track.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, numerous rumours abound that the remaining 1.5 seconds are not lost and reportedly show Senna's steering wheel clearly coming off in his hands as his car is leaving the track. Although allegations exist that this video has been seen by a number of people at the top level of motorsport, there is no evidence to support its existence.

Senna's distinctive helmet

Damon Hill, Senna's teammate at the time of his death, had this to say in an interview given on the subject 10 years later.

"After the warm-up we went to the drivers' briefing. Ayrton was upbeat and determined after his good performance, but he had concerns about the new safety car regulations. These fears were to be prophetic. It was a measure of the political climate of Formula One that Ayrton Senna felt it necessary to get other drivers to ask questions about the safety car so that he did not appear to be alone. The implication was that the bosses made the rules; if you had issues with that, they would make sure you knew who ran things. So we got on to the subject of the safety car (importantly distinct from the "pace car" used to spice up US racing).

Ayrton became vociferous, claiming that it was ill-conceived and dangerous for one specific reason — the temperature of the tyres of a Formula One car is critical in several respects. One, they only stick when they are very hot; two, the pressure varies enormously with temperature and, consequently, the stability of the tyre construction.

To sum up: if a Formula One car has to follow an ordinary road car it will not travel fast enough for the tyres to keep within their designed working temperature and pressure. I believe this was a contributing factor in Ayrton's accident, as the safety car was deployed directly after the start, exactly as he had feared.

And so it was we left the briefing on Sunday having agreed to pay some kind of tribute to Roland on the grid. We went to the normal sponsor functions and then back to the motorhome. I never really talked or spent any time with Ayrton before the race. Everything was extremely businesslike, with an added severity because of the death of Roland." ^[5]

The Williams team was entangled for many years in a court case with the Italian prosecutors over manslaughter charges, but they were found not guilty and no action was taken against Williams. In 2004, the case was re-opened, but closed again in 2005 when there was no new evidence.

At the conclusion of the Italian trial, Senna's FW16 was returned to the William's team. The team reported that the car was destroyed.

His death was considered by many of his Brazilian fans to be a national tragedy, and the Brazilian government declared three days of national mourning. More than 1 million persons followed Senna's burial in São Paulo. Senna is buried at the Cemitério do Morumbi in his hometown of São Paulo.

[edit] Legacy

Senna's grave.

A tribute to Senna at the Donington Collection, Donington Park, where Senna drove the "Drive of the Decade" in 1993.

The legendary Eau Rouge corner was temporarily reprofiled for the 1994 race. Damon Hill drives through the chicane, past graffiti written on the track to commemorate Senna.

Undoubtedly, Senna was one of the greatest drivers of all time, but for millions of people, he was much more than this - His character was larger than life; he demonstrated almost superhuman skill and determination that would have stood out in whatever field he had chosen to be part of.

Off the track, Senna was a deeply religious and compassionate man. Before his death, he created the Ayrton Senna Foundation, an organization with the aim of helping poor and needy young people in Brazil and around the world. As a result, Senna continues to impact the world today and has become a beacon of hope to millions of his countrymen and an example of professionalism and humanity to those who remember him.

In 2004 (when, ten years after his death, the Brazilian media revisited the entire life of Senna), a book called "Ayrton: The Hero Revealed" (original title: "Ayrton: O Herói Revelado" ^[6]) was published in Brazil. The book recalls several passages of Senna's career, and adds previously unknown information about his personal life.

In addition, to mark the 10th anniversary of Senna's passing, on April 21, 2004, over 10,000 people attended a charity match in a football stadium near Imola. The game was organized by several devoted Italian and Canadian fans of Ayrton, bringing together the 1994 FIFA World Cup winning team of Brazil who dedicated their 1994 FIFA World Cup win to Ayrton Senna to face the "Nazionale Piloti", an exhibition team comprised exclusively of top race car drivers (of which Senna was a part in 1985). Michael Schumacher, Jarno Trulli, Rubens Barrichello, Fernando Alonso and many others faced the likes of Dunga, Careca, Taffarel and many of the team that won the World Cup in the USA ten years earlier.

That same weekend, Bernie Ecclestone revealed that he still believed Ayrton Senna was and remained the best F1 driver he'd ever seen.

In 2005, Italian singer Cesare Cremonini released a song entitled, "Marmellata #25", and in the chorus he has part of a line that reads in Italian "ahh! da quando Senna non corre più... ...non è più domenica! ", which translates to: "Oh! When Senna doesn't race anymore...it's not Sunday anymore!"

Perhaps the unique duality of his character was most evident at the moment of his death. As track officials examined the wreckage of his racing car they found a furled, bloodsoaked Austrian flag. A victory flag that he was going to raise in honour of Austrian Roland Ratzenberger, who had died on that track the day before.

At his memorial service an estimated one million people lined the streets to give him their salute.

Michael Schumacher attended his grave in 1995, but denied having done so just before his final race before retirement at Interlagos. However, he did attend the grave before his final Grand Prix.^[7]

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] See also

• List of Formula One fatal accidents