The real reasons for Ayrton Senna's exit from the track, by Jean-Claude Migeot

Thirty years after the death of Ayrton Senna, we can still read or hear that the root cause of the accident which was fatal to him remains enigmatic or, worse still, that he could have lost control of his car. To disentangle fact from fiction and shed definitive light on the reasons which led to the tragedy, AUTOhebdo opens its columns to the flagship engineer of F1 in the 1990s and expert in the team defending the Imola circuit during the trial.

Published 01/05/2024 à 13:00

Jean-Michel Desnoues

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The real reasons for Ayrton Senna's exit from the track, by Jean-Claude Migeot

Jean-Claude Migeot reveals the real reasons for Senna's exit from the track at Imola. © DPPI

Unacceptable! Unacceptable that doubt still remains as to the conditions which led to the Williams of Ayrton Senna to go off the track on May 1, 1994, during the San Marino Grand Prix. Inadmissible towards the memory of the Brazilian, his loved ones and his millions of admirers. If I agreed to respond to AUTOhebdo's invitation, it is because I find it intolerable that such injustice towards it has a strong chance of finding its place in the history of motorsport, and that is why I resolve to publish this memoir.

On May 1, 1994, I was serving as a track engineer for the Tyrrell team, and as such, I can appreciate the characteristics of the Tamburello curve and the phenomenon of “bottoming” (explanation later. Editor’s note).

I was then appointed as an expert in the defense team at the Imola track during the trial which followed Senna's death. As such, I had access to everything that was provided to Italian justice. The preliminary investigation, then the trial, of course dissected everything that was possible to analyze, but as always in a trial, the search for the truth is blurred by the primary objective of the accused which is to find the defect of process

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1 Comment (s)

DANIEL MEYERS

01/05/2024 at 06:50 a.m.

What do the XY values ​​on the tables correspond to?

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