Hill Talks about Senna's Death

[bmwfreak]

Damon Hill has spoken for the first time about Ayrton Senna's death at the 1994 San Marino GP and how the Brazilian's fear of a safety car situation and being forced to race on cold tyres may have been a premonition.
source : www.planet-f1.com

Hill was Senna's team-mate at Williams in 1994 where the Brit was the "number one number two". However, three races into the season the structure changed suddenly when Senna was killed during the San Marino GP. The triple World Champion's death promoted Hill to the number one status while rookie driver David Coulthard was called up to fill the team's vacant seat.

"Before the San Marino GP weekend of 1994, I was the "number one number two" in Formula One. I was team-mate at Williams to the already legendary Ayrton Senna," Hill told the Sunday Times.

"By the Sunday night, however, the whole course of my life had been changed, not only because the fabric of the sport had been ripped apart with as much violence as the accidents that claimed two lives that weekend, but more because I have no doubt that I would never have been World Champion if Ayrton had not been killed at Imola."

"I have never publicly given my version of the events of that weekend, other than to give the bare technical facts to the investigators. I was there. I was intimately involved. I was deeply affected. I drove an identical car in the same race. I remember everything only too well."

The pressure was on Senna that weekend. He had failed to win a single race since joining Williams, while a young upstart from Benetton, Michael Schumacher, was showing little regard for Senna's status. Added to which Schumacher's team "Benetton were up to something unfathomable. They certainly had a distinct advantage when it came to employing the fuel-stop strategy necessary for ’94. This factor was one of the many possible influences on the mind of Ayrton during the race."

Recalling that fateful weekend Hill continued: "The tension shot up another notch in first qualifying, when Rubens Barrichello's car was seen flying, or so it seemed, into the grandstand at the last chicane."

"If it means anything to hold one's breath for only two seconds, this was the time. How the fencing held the car, which flip-flapped along its length and finally back on to the track, is the engineering mystery of all time. How Rubens wasn't hurt was another one. We all brushed ourselves off and carried on qualifying, reassured that our cars were tough as tanks and we could be shaken but not hurt."

"The next day, that was proved unequivocally to be a myth. In a brave attempt to qualify his "back-of-the-grid-or-bust" Simtek, one of the nicest men in Formula One, Roland Ratzenberger, flew unchecked at maximum speed into the concrete wall, just one corner after Tamburello, where Ayrton was to crash the day after. His front wing had come off, possibly because of a trip over the kerbs on the previous lap. The speed of impact and the angle was sickening. The car may have withstood the forces, but poor Roland could not have."

"Ayrton had gone to the scene to see for himself. Professor Sid Watkins talked with him and I think tried to persuade him not to see, but about that I'm not sure. Whatever, when he came back to the truck he told us that Roland was dead. He was upset and angry. It was typical of Ayrton to want to know, to get involved. But what made him different from the rest was that he saw Formula One as his own domain. He regarded it as totally within his rights to go to the scene and ask those involved what had happened and what they were doing. You had the feeling, even then, that he knew he was looking, potentially, at himself."

The following day, the drivers headed to the drivers’ briefing after the warm-up.

"Ayrton was upbeat and determined after his good performance, but he had concerns about the new safety car regulations. These fears were to be prophetic.

"Ayrton became vociferous, claiming that it was ill- conceived and dangerous for one specific reason — the temperature of the tyres of a Formula One car is critical in several respects. One, they only stick when they are very hot; two, the pressure varies enormously with temperature and, consequently, the stability of the tyre construction.

"To sum up: if a Formula One car has to follow an ordinary road car it will not travel fast enough for the tyres to keep within their designed working temperature and pressure. I believe this was a contributing factor in Ayrton’s accident, as the safety car was deployed directly after the start, exactly as he had feared."

Hours later the race was underway and Senna's "concerns about the new safety car regulations" were realised when JJ Lehto's car stalled and was hit by Pedro Lamy's Lotus.

"We backed off and settled in to five laps of dawdling behind the safety car while marshals cleared the track, the engines overheated and the tyres cooled down. With hindsight, the race should have been stopped, but what would have been the point of having a safety car then? The reasoning was that it was as unsafe to go through the risk of another standing start and there is some logic in that."

"However, with the broken bits of car all over the track (which we had no option but to run through) there was an added danger from punctures. This was by far the greatest risk to the drivers on such a fast track. Nevertheless, I do not believe that Ayrton had a tyre failure. The TV cameras would have easily recorded this."

Then came Senna's fateful crash...

"When you see a car, your team-mate's car, charging across the grass kicking up dust and turf, you have time for few thoughts that we would recognise as "considered". You tend to think one word only . . . beginning with f. Then you inject a quick simple prayer for him, like "I hope he's all right", before trying not to get too indecently excited about having moved up a place. That's about it."

"But when they bring out the red flags, you tend to fear the worst. We saw the red flags and backed off. No safety car this time. Now we knew things were bad. Again! What could possibly have happened now? In the weeks to come, I would be able to see exactly what had happened in those critical split-seconds for Senna."

"There were two bumps on the apex of Tamburello corner. If you go straight over them, you travel a slightly shorter distance, but the car touches the ground. I found I could go in the middle of the track, costing a few feet, but avoid them. On cold tyres and heavy fuel, I had made sure I did just that. On the in-car footage from Michael Schumacher's car, it is possible clearly to see Ayrton's car slide twice over both these bumps, which he made no attempt to avoid."

"On the second one, the car recovers grip suddenly as he has corrective lock on the wheel. You can see this from his onboard camera by the appearance and disappearance of a yellow button on the steering wheel indicating that it is being turned. You can also perceive the yaw on the car by watching the tree line."

"This confirms that the car is responding to his inputs. However, the corrective lock causes the car to 'slap' back violently as the aerodynamics recover the grip lost through grounding out, so much so in fact, that Ayrton's head is catapulted almost out of the car. In my opinion, this is when Ayrton lost control."

"At 200mph, he was unable to recover the right trajectory to make the corner. He hit the brakes hard, but nothing would stop a car at that speed before leaving the track. He was killed by a stray piece of suspension striking his head, which could kill at 20mph if it hit you at the right angle."

Hill summed up saying: "Formula One would never be the same again. For many, our entire lives would be changed too."