Official Senna telemetry Imola 94?

[munudeges]

You're speculating wildly. It's not clearcut at all that oversteer would be promoted because if, as seems pretty clear from visual footage of the car, the car bottomed completely then you've got a loss of underside and diffuser downforce (that alters the aerodynamic profile of the car completely) coupled with the car underside doing the steering as I'd said above. That is not exactly a normal set of circumstances. The behaviour of that car as soon as it started the race was completely abnormal.

[munudeges]

As an aside, in Richard Williams's book I remember that the Renault telemetry showed Senna actually stabbed his foot back on the throttle in the middle of the corner. This is an experienced driver's reaction to a large amount of understeer like that because the faster you go the more downforce you get.

[timbo]

You're speculating wildly.

And you're not?
The whole point of my various posts was to establish that pretending that anything is simple and clearcut is far from reality.

It's not clearcut at all that oversteer would be promoted because if, as seems pretty clear from visual footage of the car, the car bottomed completely then you've got a loss of underside and diffuser downforce (that alters the aerodynamic profile of the car completely) coupled with the car underside doing the steering as I'd said above.

The alteration of aerodynamics should shift the downforce balance towards the front. As for "underside doing the steering" I'm not quite sure what you mean. First off it suggests that the rear suspension is not able to hold the car. That is another problem with "bottoming theory" -- if the car bottomed and lost its downforce the rear suspension should've rebound, it could've destabilize the car and send it to a spin but understeering means that the car was travelling with little yaw angle. A car travelling on a straight line bottoming should not present much a problem. There is a possibility that the car's pitch was altered in such way that underside actually started to create lift, but given that Senna was able to decelerate it is unlikely.
Secondly if the front wing still produced downforce and front suspension and steering were intact, the car still should react to driver's inputs.

That is not exactly a normal set of circumstances. The behaviour of that car as soon as it started the race was completely abnormal.

But the laws of physics should apply anyway.

[munudeges]

You're speculating wildly because there is no evidence for any steering breakage and are merely trying to wave away the quite clearly abnormal behaviour of that car. You're just desperately going around in circles.

That is another problem with "bottoming theory" -- if the car bottomed and lost its downforce the rear suspension should've rebound

No it shouldn't. Pure speculative nonsense. With a car set at a lower ride height there is less space for the suspension to do its work. This is just so silly it isn't even funny. You've got a tremendous amount of force and momentum at play at 190mph through a corner and you're not going to get a car that ' should react to driver's inputs'. At a medium or slower speed corner maybe Senna could snap the car out of it, and maybe he already did, but the forces are simply too great at 190mph.

As for "underside doing the steering" I'm not quite sure what you mean.

You know exactly what I mean and if you don't I suggest you re-read this thread....again. If not then I suggest you perform some experiments.

Someone who doesn't know that there is a speed window that an aerodynamically drive car has to be driven to maintain its grip (go slower and you have less grip) has a fundamental lack of understanding (and let go of the emotional attachment of whose fault it was) that needs to be bridged before this can go any further.

[timbo]

No it shouldn't. Pure speculative nonsense. With a car set at a lower ride height there is less space for the suspension to do its work. This is just so silly it isn't even funny.

Really? So tell me, what suspension is doing?

You know exactly what I mean and if you don't I suggest you re-read this thread....again. If not then I suggest you perform some experiments.

No, it's you saying the "underside doing steering", so it's up to you to show experiments that prove something.

Someone who doesn't know that there is a speed window that an aerodynamically drive car has to be driven to maintain its grip (go slower and you have less grip) has a fundamental lack of understanding (and let go of the emotional attachment of whose fault it was) that needs to be bridged before this can go any further.

The downforce is proportional to the square of the speed but so is centrifugal force. They counteract each other. There's no such thing as "minimum corner speed".

[maranello55]

i think the video showed it quite clearly that the steering is displaced. But I remembered a documentray of David Coulthard explaning it dat its normal.
But i think wuteva the reason is, it is the lateral impact on a concrete wall that killed him. Theres NO WAY anyone wudve survived that. The weight of the helmet alone is enuff force to snap ur neck in an impact.

[Jersey Tom]

Lot of hand waving and speculation in this thread. Honestly I don't see what difference it makes whether the steering column broke or whether it bottomed out, lost aero load, and went off the track. Either seem equally plausible to me, though to be fair I haven't reviewed too much of the incident personally. I don't see what difference it would make if some sort of magic conclusive evidence appeared now, almost 20 years later. Both are realities of motor racing.

Something to consider when speculating the aero balance through that corner... [a] we don't have the aero map of that car, lot could be happening with both front and rear ride height going over high speed bumps, [c] there's all the wing elasticity which we can't take into consideration (check some super slow motion vids of current F1 cars over bumps or kerbs, front wings look like jelly), kind of back to point B, but there's the whole realm of dynamic aero dynamics and how forces change with abrupt changes in ride height... bearing in mind aero maps are done steady state at fixed ride heights.

Beside all that, regardless of whether you lose front or rear downforce or both equally.. as soon as the car starts to go off the track and that RF (or any position) tire gets off pavement, grip is totally gone.

Like I say, to me any combination of these things seems plausible and I don't see what difference it makes either way.

[GitanesBlondes]

i think the video showed it quite clearly that the steering is displaced. But I remembered a documentray of David Coulthard explaning it dat its normal.
But i think wuteva the reason is, it is the lateral impact on a concrete wall that killed him. Theres NO WAY anyone wudve survived that. The weight of the helmet alone is enuff force to snap ur neck in an impact.

Good time to mention that Senna was wearing an illegal, lightweight helmet.

[GitanesBlondes]

Jersey Tom-

While it may be of little importance to discuss to you since it makes "little difference", I disagree with you on that notion.

It was the most seminal event in F1 history as that, more than any prior event shaped the entire future of the sport for better or worse. In spite of all of the prior deaths in years past, not a single one altered the direction of F1 as much as the death of Senna did. That is why in spite of arguments put forth, the arguments continue now almost 20 years after we last saw Senna racing.

If he either walks away from the wreck of the Williams-Renault, or simply never goes off the circuit that day, I can absolutely guarantee you that the sport we watch in 2013 looks entirely different from the sport we actually watch currently. The outward ripples of what happened on May 1st, 1994 are so immense, that to try and pinpoint the effect on every single aspect is near impossible.

That being said, I do think it is worth --no matter how little difference it makes on the outcome of those events-- to try and pinpoint the events that happened over the span of 2 seconds due to what the historical impact was. I also happen to be deeply fascinated with fatal auto racing accidents, which is why I like to discuss them with people. For as gruesome and uncomfortable as they make people with their sudden finality, the things to be learned from them are interesting. I also use them to chart the progress of racing as a whole.

[Tommy Cookers]

i think the video showed it quite clearly that the steering is displaced. But I remembered a documentray of David Coulthard explaning it dat its normal.
But i think wuteva the reason is, it is the lateral impact on a concrete wall that killed him. Theres NO WAY anyone wudve survived that. The weight of the helmet alone is enuff force to snap ur neck in an impact.

Good time to mention that Senna was wearing an illegal, lightweight helmet.

typically for motor racing accidents the lighter the helmet the less likely is a fatal basal skull fracture
some drivers would have survived if they had not worn helmets
that's why the HANS is now mandatory

[GitanesBlondes]

i think the video showed it quite clearly that the steering is displaced. But I remembered a documentray of David Coulthard explaning it dat its normal.
But i think wuteva the reason is, it is the lateral impact on a concrete wall that killed him. Theres NO WAY anyone wudve survived that. The weight of the helmet alone is enuff force to snap ur neck in an impact.

Good time to mention that Senna was wearing an illegal, lightweight helmet.

typically for motor racing accidents the lighter the helmet the less likely is a fatal basal skull fracture
some drivers would have survived if they had not worn helmets
that's why the HANS is now mandatory

HANS was probably the greatest advance ever made with regards to safety. It just took awhile for the whole thing to catch on sadly as there were quite a few more preventable deaths in racing after then.

But, had he been wearing a regular helmet, the suspension would not have punctured the helmet. The helmet was so lightweight that you could indent it with your fingers. He was wearing it for comfort reasons, nothing more, which was the same as Niki Lauda in 1976 when he had his shunt. Senna's helmet was quickly incinerated when his family got it back.

One of the things that I think this topic should do at the very least --no matter how uncomfortable the whole thing makes some-- is to inform people of the decisions that Senna himself made prior to the start of the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. If anything, it should at least cause some people to question the explanation of the steering column snapping prior to the accident at Tamburello. The entire accident was never the cut and dry garbage the Italian prosecutors tried to make it out to be.

Years later when the FW-16 chassis when it arrived back at Williams, I'd love to know if they ran any further tests on it. The only thing I know about that, is that the engine went back to Renault Sport, and the chassis was destroyed.

[Jersey Tom]

Jersey Tom-

While it may be of little importance to discuss to you since it makes "little difference", I disagree with you on that notion.

It was the most seminal event in F1 history as that, more than any prior event shaped the entire future of the sport for better or worse. In spite of all of the prior deaths in years past, not a single one altered the direction of F1 as much as the death of Senna did. That is why in spite of arguments put forth, the arguments continue now almost 20 years after we last saw Senna racing.

If he either walks away from the wreck of the Williams-Renault, or simply never goes off the circuit that day, I can absolutely guarantee you that the sport we watch in 2013 looks entirely different from the sport we actually watch currently. The outward ripples of what happened on May 1st, 1994 are so immense, that to try and pinpoint the effect on every single aspect is near impossible.

That being said, I do think it is worth --no matter how little difference it makes on the outcome of those events-- to try and pinpoint the events that happened over the span of 2 seconds due to what the historical impact was. I also happen to be deeply fascinated with fatal auto racing accidents, which is why I like to discuss them with people. For as gruesome and uncomfortable as they make people with their sudden finality, the things to be learned from them are interesting. I also use them to chart the progress of racing as a whole.

Sure it was an important moment in the history of F1, certainly from a safety perspective. But I feel like the "why" of the incident is irrelevant at this point.

From an investigative standpoint would it be interesting to learn all the details of what happened? Sure. But how is that going to happen? I can't conceive of a way as it is... with whatever limited onboard data and video there is. And how at this point would we generate any additional information?

So we can hand wave and intellectually masturbate all we want on the topic, I just don't see coming to any new conclusion or it being anything positive.

[Richard]

We'll never be able to prove if there was over steer, under steer, driver error, broken steering column, or the pixies. Admittedly the pixies are an unlikely cause but there is no proof that they didn't cause it, just like there is no proof in the public domain that wasn't the car bottoming out, or the steering column wasn't broken.

Equally if the suspension hadn't hit Senna, how do we know he didn't have a fatal basal skull fracture like Ratzenberger the previous day?

The point is that any comment in this thread is speculation.

At Tom says, it is an interesting engineering conundrum - What would have happened if car had lost underfloor aero? (note the conditional phrasing) Do we really know if the aero balance would have been thrown forward, backward or neither? We don't know the mechanical set up either. So while there is a valid rationale in each of the various hypotheses, none of us know enough to know which hypothesis is the right one.

All I do know for certain is that the 3 major accidents resulting in 2 fatalities were the result of a storm that was brewing for a couple of years. Those 3 accidents highlighted a common root cause, and common unsafe consequences. It just happened that Senna was one of those caught up in it.

[timbo]

All I do know for certain is that the 3 major accidents resulting in 2 fatalities were the result of a storm that was brewing for a couple of years. Those 3 accidents highlighted a common root cause, and common unsafe consequences. It just happened that Senna was one of those caught up in it.

More than 3 actually. If you count incident that caused driver to miss the GP as major there were at least 8. A horror year by any account.

[GitanesBlondes]

I was thinking about it, in terms of the overall reaction of the Williams, it reminds me quite a bit of Gordon Smiley's accident at Indianapolis in May 1982. In his case, the rear stepped out, he counter-steered to compensate, then the front tires caught grip on the banking, and he veered off right, into the wall.

Here's the link to Smiley's crash.

http://youtu.be/lBUFJ2O9nM8