Hi all
Another big post, as per request of my former colleague Christian Lisboa.
This is a Bitter sweet one:
Bitter because for me, F1 died with Senna. I stopped watching races as I was so disgusted with the way they allowed it to happen, the way the race continued as they clearly knew he was dead... the disrespectful manner they managed the "last squeeze" out of their "golden Chicken", was just too much to forgive. Bitter because he was an extraordinary human being and even better driver, and i respect him immensely. Sweet because during this post I not only talk about the accident, but also talk about who he was and how gigantic he was... both sport and personal wise.
This will be a long one, and I'll approach the explanation of how Senna died, but, more important, the physics behind his crash and the even more important guilt by some people that deserve no respect at all from the rest of human kind (although one of them "presented him self as a friend of Senna").
Before starting:
I'll just start by stating that Senna was the best I've seen... ever. There are authentic Gods of driving before and after Senna, some alive, others not... but Senna was an absolute prodigy that lived to race. His focus was absolute.
A lot of people argue if Messi or Christiano Ronaldo or Figo or Maradona where the best football player... Messi is a natural born genius, Christiano has archived by means of unprecedented focus and dedication and very very hard work, Figo was intelligent and technical and Maradona was all passion and he gave it all to the game... heart and soul.
If you where to Fuse all these together, you would come up with a football player that would still come short if compared to Senna as a Race car driver.
A lot of people misunderstand Senna and come shallow. But if you dig into the documentaries of his short life, and if you understand the culture he grew up in, you'll learn to respect him in ways that may surprise you.
Senna as a race car driver
Senna started driving karts and winning at 8years of age. He was small, light and tried to understand how the mechanics of the kart worked. He used it all to be faster and more aggressive... this physical characteristic was maintained, by means of a tough physical preparation routine, through his life. As a kid, being trained and advised to "cool down his times" he would reply: no! with me it's either first place or no place.
This attitude, however was not filled with presumptuousness like most. His friends described him as someone "big enough to be little". He wanted first place but he knew he had still limitations and he had to learn. So he followed an independent career being champion at all steps. Karting was the one championship that he didn't win, but all the formulas, he followed patiently the path and even declined a jump to 2 F1 teams in the process. He had to reach it and learn the way through... we would not take shortcuts.
He knew he had to build driving skill and also mechanical knowledge... or... engineering skill. And he pursued that with passion and dedication rivalled by no one else. The one other driver that came close was Michael Schumacker.
He was also conscientious that he was small and light, so he build himself up to the task ahead. He started his physical tune-up in 1984 and he never stopped till the end of his life. He tuned himself to have better blood sugar and oxygen levels consistent under stress, and keep his BPMs as low as possible.
Much like a race car from those years (it was light as possible and made "fragile" to the point of minimal needed function) It will hold together and have the strength to suffer stress... until you crash... then you have no possible protection from the chassis as the logic is: this was made to race, not made to crash, so don't!
Senna was light and his physical preparation was always towards having enough strength to race the car without driver-aids assistance and during the race... and not more.
Senna rigorously prepared himself physically for stamina and leanness. He tried a balance between having strong neck muscles, but the remaining muscle preparation was mostly cardio (with LOTS of running) in order to have lean muscles and not big muscles.
Senna has several videos after his races where you can see him suffering in pain and not being able to withstand hugs and shakes due to extreme muscle fatigue and a lot of pain. Those where frequent as he was... building him self to have ONLY the necessary muscle to drive the race... not more as it would be weight and size, no less as he wouldn't be able to finish or drive properly. This sort of "Fine engineering" of your body is some samurai stuff!
The first time Senna lost a race to rain, his frustration led him to get back to a kart, on slicks get to the track and drive in the rain... over and over and over... and then progress to bigger chassis and learn all over again. He would learn and study new chassis designs typically in the rain.
Senna practised what was scary to him until it was actually fun. You can see this attitude on Another genius called Keiichi Tsuchiya (the drift king).... they actually have a lot in common in terms of driving technique both steering and throttle management wise.
The result was a mastery of the car dynamics that no one else came close too master. In the rain Senna managed to find grip where no one else was able to. But this knowledge is also valid in the dry... resulting in the capability of driving CONSTANTLY on the car's/track/weather grip limits.
His win rate in the rain twice as good as Michael Schumacher was (66% vs 36.5%). This was clear at Donington race in 1993 as you can see for your self:
There is something you need to understand about Senna. He looks at all aspects of the race... and that includes the weather. You see, back then McLaren had chassis to race but the development of the engines (leaving the turbo engine and going back to natural aspirated) where still behind the competition's power delivery. So he had to use the conditions where all others couldn't use the power advantage... so he had to use that as an advantage.. and he did so with brilliance yet to be seen again.
He also studied the mechanics of the race cars he drove and while other race car drivers would pit-in, state the car was "loose on the rear-end" and drive of to the hotel, Senna would literally live in the Paddock, with the mechanical team and would tell you that the "rear toe in is to aggressive for the wing down force" for instance. His knowledge of the car systems and tune-ups was so great that he even adjusted brake bias to solve hydraulic issues during racing, or even finished races with a blocked gearbox in 6th gear.
The level of focus he had was tremendous. He was a very religious man (as most Portuguese and Brazilian are) and the fact that he talked about "feeling closer to God" and that " he believed that God would help him out of trouble", etc was miss interpreted by a lot of people... stating with his scared shitless colleague alain prost (small caps in disrespect... yes).
You see Senna did believe in God, but what you believe in is just a figure of speech. Buddhists monks meditate and reach a state they feel elevated, devoted Catholics feel that being indoors in a church makes them feel elevated... it's just a way to picture a strong will to believe in something that makes you re-wire your brain.
There is a reason why training is often repetitive. If generates brain connections that will allow you to react without having to think about it.
If you are able to believe in something that doesn't exist, but you still strongly believe, your brain will rewire and offset part of the "thinking process into a not needed" allowing for the purely physical movements to happen.
You react using per-memorised action/reaction patterns and bypass the thinking process. This is what happened with Senna. By strongly believing in God he reduced the fear of death/injury, allowing him to enter a state of "meditation" if you please and focus his brain activity on the dynamics of the car and not the dynamics of a crash and pain and misery, etc etc etc.
He got so focused in this that during some of his races, Sid Watkins, watching the telemetries, said that he would stop breathing for up to a minute... this is tremendous, particularly in a f1 car form the 90's
Some pilots understood this,, like his team-mate at the time of death, Damon Hill. He would say that Senna would through himself into a corner faster than he ever did and believe that something inside him would pull him through..some people call it faith, some people call it belief, but if you study him,, you understand that he trained himself so he could have muscle memory solve part of the problem, and focus his brain on the physics to make it work, instead of multitasking himself into a crash due to delayed reaction.... brilliant!
Look at this lap on this RUTHLESS Monaco circuit.
Senna got so serious about driving that when he made mistakes, we would stress about them and punitively re-live the circumstances (cry in frustration) and then... learn as a traumatic experience. He must had been half Japanese with this Samurai/Ronin sort of ways.
Last but not least, Senna compartmentalized friendship and rivalry. The fact that you are friends with someone, doesn't mean you are going to giveaway an easy win. Rivals are rivals and the battle to win would happen independently of friendship. There was always respect for life and the individual and the sport was the main driver for this behavior. He would battle to win each corner, each breaking approach, each racing line... the sport. Not politics and deception.
This is why I lost all respect for alain prost. He mixed being competitive with being vengeful and that ultimately strongly contributed to the path that lead to Senna's death.
But Senna the man... has the ultimate workaholic.
The disgusting politics and french protectorate
Back in that day, the president for F1 was jean marie balestre (small caps in disrespect). An authoritative, arrogant and very nationalist Frenchmen.
Evidently, being French and very political, alain prost had a excellent relationship with balestre and he was very protective of alain.
prost was a very methodical driver and also very very egoist. Efficient, but far from genius like Ayrton, we clearly understood we would be eclipsed by the your team mate and as such they started a very nervous relationship.
The problem here was that, as Senna was much better than prost as a driver prost was a good politician and Senna was everything but a politician.
The competition between the 2 got to a point where, in Susuka 1989, prost, leading the championship and having the title IF Ayrton didn't score the race, crashed against Ayrton on purpose (trying to take him out of the race). But Sennas superior driving managed to escape wth a damaged car through the safety chicane and drive to the pit, have the car's nose fixed, back on the track and won the race.
Being a politician, prost rushed to is "mummy" balestre and they both conspired to blame it all on Senna as being very aggressive.
Not happy with it, they also distorted the safety regulations and grabbed the rules book to invalidate Senna's victory. In the end the deliberation was that as Senna "followed through" the chicane, he did not complete that lap via the circuit path. As such the lap did not count.EVIDENTLY the chicane is there to permit the drivers to slow down, and the follow through is there to permit the ones that fail the breaking into the chicane APEX, have a secure alternative to avoid crashing. According the blestre's arguments, Senna should have reversed back into the chicane, going the wrong direction, and then resume the chicane. It's absurd, dangerous and plain stupid.
They managed to sanction Senna with 100.000 GBP fine and a 6 month ban. Ayrton was disqualified from the Japanese Grand Prix as a result, and prost won the championship that year. They also tried to launch a civil law suit against Senna.
As McLaren manager, Ron Denis, tried to save the day, jean marie balestre threatened to ban McLaren from racing.
As expected from a politician, prost pursued to badmouth Senna in public hearings claiming he was a danger to other drivers because he believed in God and drove like a mad man... how bizarre! Senna clearly speaks out claiming: "I'm a race car driver! I always try to win! I never settle! If i see an opening and do not try to take it, then I'm not a race car driver anymore" This is possibly the most professional claim I can think of, as a reply to such absurd claims from prost (and I'm an atheist).
McLaren released prost form contract and prost shifted to Ferrari, running away from Senna as a team mate.
Fate has it's ironic cycles and in 1990, on the same situation, same track, but with inverted roles, Senna did the same to prost ,and took the championship... it's one of those times where you can see Senna being vengeful and unhappy with that. He crashed both cars on the first corner in a very clear statement.
This same year, during driver briefing, the same rule that got Senna to lose the race the year before, was waved away (as it should) because of safety considerations. Senna backfired as you can see here:
Again alain was playing political games with balestre,and managed to steal the pole-position from Senna, after Senna qualified with the best lap time,(as usual)... well our boy was not gonna eat another pile of crap so... here is the what goes around comes around moment:
If you want to see how balestre was, you have a good picture here:
The pressure
As time went on, McLaren/Honda was not being able to maintain technical superiority, partially because Honda was shifting it's "support" for f1 and not giving its best.
Back then, the arrogant alain badmouthed Ferrari's car and engine, and as such, was fired! You can badmouth ANYTHING but the car, if you work for Ferrari.
As he moved towards Williams, he insisted on a clause on his contract that stated that, while his contract was valid, Williams would not hire Senna.
There is a catch here. Williams had just debuted the FW15 chassis. It was nothing brilliant mechanically, BUT it had active suspension... and that made it a complete GOD on track.
Senna's McLaren could not compete with a car that would setup for each curve automatically... and was loosing ground behind prost that had an easy win on the championship...and retired while he was still ahead.
Senna felt unsupported (mainly from Honda) and then from the technical disadvantage McLaren had against Williams.
More Political crap
As expected prost retired. Williams was then free to take on Senna and they did.
But our friend balestre was not yet done. A ban on Active-Suspension meant that now, Ayrtons fresh new Williams would not behave as it did before. In fact the car's chassis without active-suspension (FW16) was inferior to what McLaren (the one Senna had previously) had and was very unstable.
It wasn't all. Back then the cars had jumped from 660Bhp to over 800bhp between 1989 and 1991, and there was traction control and abs available to help the drivers. The gearbox had torque limiting functions to avoid low gear spin.
Guess what... those where banned too (or heavily tamed down).
The consequence was that Senna had a very difficult to drive and less then perfect chassis on his hands.
Frustration was setting in.
The direct consequences of the ban on driver-aids where immediate:
Pedro Lammy broke both his legs and a front collision, after locking his front wheels while breaking for the Monaco chicane.
Ruben Barrichelo crashed badly that fatal weekend, Roland Razenberger lost control of his car and hit the protection wall at over 300km/h. He died instantly.
Senna was then presiding the pilot syndicate and brought this extra pressure on to his shoulders. Something had to be done to restore some safety into the sport. But mean time, show had to go-on... and he would die on that same weekend. Senna had lost his battle against politics... professionalism and passion lost to deceiving and grease (the most disgusting thing in existence).
The crash
The day of the crash, Senna is very nervous. There is a comment that some interpret as a "peace message", I personally interpret as a very intelligent and loaded with cynicism critic to both alain and balestre. Before racing, Senna says "please come back alain, we miss you".
No one will really know what he meant, but what I read is that he wants to say something like : you should return, with you here, balestre would never ban the active suspension so you could win, he would never ban other driving aids so you could win... in the end, we're dying here and having you around would be sufficient to ensure proper rules for you that we would benefit from (or at least not drop dead because of). Some people think that phrase means, I miss you, I miss the constant fight... but if you consider all the pain prost-balestre politics pulled him through, you would think twice. In the end, I believe Senna saw balestre as the chauvinistic beast he was and understood that the past, thought hard, was not as bad, because of the presence of a french champion on the sport... it's a very sad feeling and his face shows evidence of it! he was right.
The cabal moment:
The moment of the crash is a well known film, and it has spawned several theories.
I've heard about tire burst (no evidence of that, on the contrary)... steering column catastrophically failure (another joke... when you break the steering, your hands instantly snap free to rotate due to the breakage on the link between your hands, torsion and the wheels gyroscopic movement)...the list goes on, but I'm sure some ET has a part in the plot.
Conspiracy theory nr 1 - the steering column -
The video shows an erratic movement of the steering column. It looks like as if the Weld-adjusted steering column broke at the welds and cause Senna to crash.
Take a good look at the conspiracy theory video:
There are several problems with this video:
1 - the steering column, at 3 g's will flex and allow movement... it's designed to do so.
2 - the steering column adjustment that increased the length, was done by adding pipe-IN-pipe and then welding them together. So the piece of pipe (that actually broke with the impact) was placed inside the original steering column pipe. This means that the only way the steering would break like that, would be by a fracture being able to crack TWICE the metal thickness (plus the stronger weld)... very very dubious.
3 - The telemetry! The little tell-all blackbox on board the car, measured everything from percentage of inputs to torsion forces, and in included the steering wheel. That actually shows that Senna was 101% throttle through the corner, the torque applied on the steering was quite on the linear side of things (a broken part would generate variations as the frustration of the pilot would ask more form the failing part), It then shows a decrease in torque and 1/10th of a second later, a counter steer (yes, he reacted to his last drift in 1/10th of a second.... wow)... then full brakes as the torque was still being applied by the driver.
4 - the footage - If you are forcing a pipe to turn left... and apply force... and it fails, your hands will cross to the right as you "win" against the pipe fail. Several pilots told that.
So what really happened?
Senna was driving the recently capped down chassis, and struggling to find balance. As a result of the chassis losing the active-suspension it had been designed for, the best way to fix it, was to just lower the car, much like you see today with "bad tuning". Lowering the car kept the center of gravity low and, crucially, would generate extreme wind velocity under the car, generating a lot of down-force that, in turn, generates grip. The problem is that there is a reason as to why cars have suspension.
The reality is that, having the car that low, would depend heavily in other factors that had to be maintained:
1 - tire stress and temperature
2 - track pavement quality and smoothness
Some background: Daniel Bernoulli, back in the 1730's, mathematically describes the relationship between pressure, density and flow velocity, in fluids.
The physics is as follows: if you look at an airplane wing cross section, you will find that the air that goes under the wing has la shorter path to follow, while the the air going over the wing has a longer path to go... so it must flow faster. Faster fluid movement generates lower pressures and that will pull the airplane up.
Now look ad the cross section of the airplane wing and turn it upside down, you will end up with the fundamental design of an F1 car.
In the end, an F1 car is more of an inverted airplane than a car.
At full speed, an F1 car generated 4x it's weight in down-force, without generating inertial weight. The problem is that if you remove the aero dynamics form the equation, its just as you have an invisible hand from a giant pressing you car down a curve, making it grip and hold-in the the road... and then. mid corner, the hand suddenly is removed... you car will be taking too much speed and too little force to sqeeze the tires to the ground and you'll crash! Any high performance racing car will have a minimum turning speed, meaning that if you turn into a corner bellow that speed, the aerodynamics will not be helping you have grip and you will crash.
Back then, Immola had been "almost" red-flagged due to poor track conditions. The track was not smooth enough. Obviously, some careful political negotiations avoided that... but then Ruben Barrichelo got hurt, Ratzenberger and Senna died... well, politics has a way of making carnage refined and inconsequential to the killers behind it.
As any major accident, it gets down to a series of "fails" that pile up and sequence to generate one cabal moment.
So what really happened based out of physics, telemetry data, footage from his car and the racers following him?
Senna's car was too low! It was such way so that, after the initial laps where the race starts picking up pace the car would be at a optimum distance from the ground, as the tires inflated with heat and the ride weight would stabilise into the optimum value to squeeze as much air as possible under the car's flat bottom and maximise grip on high speed corners.
Footage from Schumacher's car and Damon Hill show Senna's car belly hitting the ground constantly and sparking all over... there is a MASSIVE spark shower right at the point Senna lost grip as you can see here from Schumacher footage as he was pursuing Senna:
The car was bottoming because instead of having 7 full laps of tire warming time, the race was interrupted and the pace-car was pulled into the track to reduce the speed while the a crashed car was removed from the track and the track cleaned-up.
This made the tires less warm, and less inflated, reducing the ride weight that was just TOO TIGHT due to the chassis natural instability! As the car passed some bumps on the poorly maintained tarmac, with the tires still under-inflated, the car bottomed into the ground and blasted sparks all over the place as you can see by Schumacher's footage.
This interrupted the flow of High-speed air under the car and stopped "sucking" the car onto the ground, at that point, the rear wheels, under 101% throttle power and no downforce, started to spin as the tires gave away into the inertia of having to turn the heaviest part of the car without assistance.
In 1/10th of a second, Senna counter-steered to maintain the car stable, but the bump is now through and the car is starting to grip. As the grip on the front-end is regained the car violently pulls in the direction of the centrifugal force, throwing the car outwards in the track. Senna, again, blazing fast corrects the steering and applies 100% breaking... but the "tamburello turn" is very poorly designed and there is no space to recover.
The car skids all the way into the concrete wall and violently hits the wall.
The accident was not avoidable.
NatGeo has a good documentary that covers almost all angles. I recommend you to watch it and learn a thing or 2 about how "on the limit" the physics of an F1 car is.:
The bad luck
If the angle that Senna's car hit the concrete wall was a bit less incisive, he would have exited the car maybe shaken but certainly alive.
However, as he right front tire hit the wall and broke, it got pinned between the car and the wall as it was dragged along with the movement. As the car rebound off the wall, the entire tire assembly with all the hub and suspension arms passed over the car towards Senna's head and hit him hard.
The crash point in Senna's helmet shows that the heavy, hard and full of inertia wheel hub, with the attached suspension arm, hit Senna's head just above the right eyebrow, fracturing the helmet and transmitting the force into his skull that fractured and ruptures the temporal artery.
His fate was sealed... the hemorrhage and damage to the brain would leave him suffering and dyeing. Senna died at the track, but he was immediately reanimated several times all the way to the hospital for one simple reason: Had he died at the track, the track would have been closed and the race finished. Imagine how many million would not be won by F1 and the sponsors due to the interruption of that race... yeah the little piggies had to get their dime.
Here are some pictures from the "senna files" website (conspiracy theory website I may add):
Summing up?
1 - balestre... his pursuit to
protect alain prost and then "ignore" safety while banning driver-aids
like that, makes him my number one culprit. Has Senna had the
active-suspension like prost had, the car would be riding at normal
heights and not as unstable.
2 - SanMarino race track - if the road is bad... then it is not fit for racing. You need to loose money by not hosting the event and then lose more fixing it... but at least you don't kill people. Also, and that was pointed by Senna before, the concrete wall at the end of a very slim deceleration area, on such a fast corner, would never be a good idea now, would it?
The rest of it is consequences and bad luck,, added to a sport that was pure risk.
But the disrespectful meaner that the organisers treated him the moment he became a threat to alain prost, all the way to his death is just too disgusting to ignore.
To me, it was not just the best driver of all time that died that day. It was also F1 as a sport... just sad.
The one remaining conspiracy theory that makes sense
There was previous to the accident, evidence that, in the pursue for lightness, williams FW16 chassis was very fragile and some catastrophic suspension collapses had happened before.
The same theory could explain a sudden diving of the car front end and that would then be the cause for the disruption of air under the car.
This however is not sustained with evidence and the footage from Schumachers car seem to show the bottoming happening at the heaviest part of the car (the engine/transmission package).
However the same evidence that can't prove that, can't eliminate that.
The reaction from Williams is a factor that could be looked at, but the nervous reaction from the team could be as much fear from responsibility as true responsibility... so it's just speculative.
That however does not remove all the other factors and neither Lamy, not Barrichelo, not Ratzenberger where driving Williams FW16...
... I'll leave it up to you to make your own conclusions.
