Seismic Seconds - The Death of Ayrton Senna « Full and Free

Seismic Seconds - The Death of Ayrton Senna

21 Apr, 2008 Video Documentary

Description:
Seismic Seconds was a National Geographic Channel series that analysed the causes of six incidents, five involving the loss of human life. The better-known sequel to Seismic Seconds, Seconds From Disaster, replaced the short documentary.

In 2004, a television documentary by National Geographic called Seismic Seconds: The Death of Ayrton Senna was screened worldwide. The program considered the available data from Senna’s car to reconstruct the sequence of events that led to the fatal crash. The program 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, the skid-plate on the bottom of the car connected with the ground, rendering the car’s steering and lateral grip useless. Senna reacted with his characteristic “twitch” reflexes, but as the car regained grip and steering with the steering wheel in a right-lock corrective position, Senna effectively drove off the circuit. The program 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 some drivers of that era who had raced at Imola, the conclusions drawn from low tyre pressure as a cause of the accident seem implausible. Telemetry recorded that Senna took the bend at 306 km/h (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 fewer 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. Michele 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.