Ayrton Senna Williams FW16 Disaster Report
2,193Senna Quotes: [For Google Translate]
0:01
Racing… Competing is in my blood, is part of me, its part of my life. I’ve been doing it all my life and it stands up before anything else.
3:10
[I] Suppose the best thing to say is that.. if I can be as happy as I have been in these past few weeks... at the end of the year … i feel that ah… we have done pretty well in the [F1] 1994 Season.
4:48
To spin that way is not very pleasant but I… on the other hand, perhaps He [God] gave us a little bit of a … warning about something in the car. Because it happened the same thing to my team mate, exactly the same place, so.. I think… we know... perhaps … that there is a possible, potential problem... somewhere [in the car].
A lengthy video about Ayrton Senna's main problems along the year of 1994.
Starting with images from pre-season tests at Estoril, where we could understand the cockpit ergonomic discomfort, a car inherited from Alain Prost, much smaller than Ayrton.
But the main point is Ayrton crashed due to a very twitchy car with stability problems on aerodynamic and mechanical [suspension] sides, having to run very low at the back due to longitudinal weight transfer problems.
Senna even related the problem to the Renault Motrsport boss:
https://youtu.be/Y405aHvXM5U?t=372
The point is the car was running very low and was bottoming very hard at the Tamburello curve asphalt emends which might have caused some severe instability or even broken parts.
To worsen the problem, the FW16 had problems to heat the tires as as you can check at the [9:32] Q1 qualify session and Warm-up, the sparks from rasping the floor at Tamburello were brighter in the first laps, with colder tires and started to disappear as the session went on and tires and car temperatures went higher.
Unfortunately on Sunday, there was a crash at the start and from the moment the Yellow flag was waved to start the grid alignment lap [12:56] until Lap 5, the cars were following a painful slow Safety Car [Opel Vectra with 175 hp], and the 6 laps [6x5,040 km] were completed in 15 min [0,4 h]. Which give us an average speed of 75,6 Km/h, too slow for F1 standards.
So the FW16 tires were very cold and w/ low pressure, meaning the car hide was also low, as we can see in the sparks of Lap 6 [19:56], the first competition lap.
So, IMO, the steering column broke after the crash, sitting on his lap, and Senna lost control due to the instability of his car worsened by low pressure on his tires, as defended by Martin Brundle.
21:10
Frank Williams to Goodyear technician: Do as Ayrton says. If he has an accident, you... are in deep trouble.
[*] Special thanks to Conor, from The Variety Network for some many images.