Timbo, the understeer has already been discussed. Everything comes down to the ride height of the Williams and that the chassis was bottoming out. Damon Hill's car was not doing that at all.timbo wrote:It's just amazes me how you keep repeating that the only motivation of people defending steering failure hypothesis is that of somehow defending Senna.GitanesBlondes wrote:Newey knows exactly what happened that day, and he is the only one who was in the Williams camp that has gone as far as he has with his statements. I give him a lot of credit, since as we see even here, it's difficult for people to accept Senna made a bad judgment that day. If he had run Damon's setup, he would still be here today.
Both variants put question on his judgement. If he had a faulty column, and we have indications that it developed over time and the amount of flex was apparent at least the lap before, it's too his decision to continue the race and risk his life.
I keep repeating the same question -- why his car developed massive understeer when leaving the circuit?
It might be that he lost the rear end first then corrected. But if you repeat what Newey said, than I have to point to you that the two phase "pendulum" motion that causes the car to leave the circuit to the outside of the corner is two oversteer events. If you make parallels with Smiley's accident then you have to notice that he crashed the wall with significant radial speed component. In Senna's case it was almost completely tangential movement.
As for Senna loosing car due to bumps, you can watch two his accidents in Mexico. They look nothing like what happened in Imola.
It also amazes me people continually ignore that the Renault telemetry showed the steering was working just fine until impact. Blaming the steering makes it easier for people to accept what happened because it absolves Senna of all blame. The ride height being culpable in what happened changes that dynamic to one in which Senna now is at fault.
Regarding the Mexico City accidents, he wasn't driving a car with the sort of unstable rear end that the Williams had in the early part of the 1994 season. The Peraltada shunt in June 1991 was down to him trying to take the corner in 6th gear instead of 5th. He downshifted to 5th when he realized he was carrying too much speed and the balance in the car was lost. Altogether different situation there than Imola. Then again, the similarity could be found in that he was trying too hard to gain time in both situations that put himself into avoidable positions.
