Formula One team boss Frank Williams and five other defendants were yesterday acquitted of manslaughter charges in relation to the death of Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix in Imola, Italy.
Three-and-a-half years after the 190mph crash, Imola court judge Antonio Costanzo has ruled that neither the Williams team nor Formula One officials nor the Imola track management were responsible for Senna's death.
State attorney Maurizio Passarini had argued that Senna's fatal crash at the Tamburello bend on lap seven had been caused by a faulty weld on the steering column of Senna's Williams-Renault car. At Senna's request, adjustments to the column had been effected the night before the race.
The Williams team, and in particular Frank Williams, have always rejected this charge, arguing throughout the trial that a variety of factors - over-steering, faulty tyre pressure, driver error - could all have contributed to Senna's death.
In his final summing-up at the end of a trial which began last May, state attorney Passarini had asked for the charges against Frank Williams, the Belgian Forumula One official Roland Bruynseraede and the Imola track managers Federico Bendinelli and Giorgio Poggito to be dropped. Magistrate Passarini had, however, recommended a suspended one-year sentence for two members of the Williams team, technical director Patrick Head and former designer Adrian Newey.
Commenting on yesterday's judgement, a Williams team spokesman described it as "the only just conclusion possible". That spokesman probably spoke for much of the Formula One community which has always regarded the trial as a pointless exercise in bureaucratic folly, given the obvious risks run by Formula One drivers every time they get into a racing car.
The decision to press charges against Williams and the others, taken almost exactly one year ago, had provoked angry reaction from senior Formula One figures. Veteran team boss Ken Tyrell and Benetton boss Flavio Briatore both threatened a boycott of Italy's two grands prix (at Imola and Monza), if the trial resulted in convictions.
Lawyer Max Mosley, head of the sport's world governing body, FIA, had also suggested that, unless Italian manslaughter laws were changed, the precedent established by bringing charges against Frank Williams and his team could make it difficult to persuade non-Italian teams and officials to participate in future Italian grands prix.
All of those fears have, to some extent, proved unfounded. Given the legal precedent established by a similar case into the death of Austrian driver Jochen Rindt in 1970 at Monza, it was always probable that all six defendants would be acquited.
What still remains unclear, and indeed may forever remain unclear, is just why Ayrton Senna died? How come one of the most intuitive drivers in Formula One lost control so disastrously?
One very obvious consideration is clear, however, namely that Formula One motor racing, for all its greatly improved safety standards, inevitably remains a highly dangerous sport. As Benetton boss Flavio Briatore said yesterday: "Fatality is part of the game".
