2 replies to this topic

[pRy]

This post is mainly curiosity and thoughts. Before I begin, I do not intend to start a big thread about the death of Ayrton, I am merely discussing some thoughts about the cause of his crash and Schumachers recent Monza testing crash.

To recap on yesterdays events at Monza :

Schumacher suffered a high speed crash which appeared to result in some form of sudden failure.

Schumacher Crash Caused by Loss of Downforce

"He suddenly lost downforce at the rear," the team said in a statement. Initial inspection of the car and analysis of the telemetric data, shows that the loss of downforce could have been caused by damage to the car's under-floor, as a result of running over the kerbs at the chicane just before Roggia."

The basic upshot, to my understanding, is that as Schumacher approached the chicane, his car suddenly lost downforce due to a problem with the undertray of his car. The car... [and this bit unfortunatly can not be confirmed without video] ... flew straight off the track, in what I read was a straight line.

Lets recap to Imola 1994 ...

Senna left the road during the Imola GP, going straight off and into a wall at near head on impact. The initial suggestions of steering failure where denied by Williams, instead, another theory was put forward :

The car, upon riding the curbs of the Tamburello corner too roughly due to his car being lower than normal.. possibly due to a bad setup or bad tyre pressures, suddenly suffered a "surf effect". Its hard to explain, but the basic principle was that the car had bottomed so badly that the car had momentarily become out of control, its direction changing and by the time Senna had realised, he was alreaddy flying off the road and unable to do much to correct what had happened, other than break.

When I read the Schumacher cause report, suggesting that his undertray had caused a sudden loss of downforce, causing him to fly off the track.. I wondered, did Schumacher suffer the same aerodynamic effect as Senna did in 1994? Could this have been a virtual repeat of Sennas crash? The causes/lead up to the actuall crash may differ, but is there any possibility of a strong simularity?

I thought to myself, what if.. and this is not to be taken to heart people, but what if Schumacher had been injured and unable to speak of the cause, and what if the black box in the Ferrari had become unusable... would Ferrari have known what caused the crash? To everyone, Schumacher "just went off". There would be no broken wing, no burst tyres, no broken suspension, it's almost like a hidden crash cause, only detectable if there is telemetry to look at. In Sennas crash this didn't excist, at least not enough to prove the undertray theory.

I may be totally off the mark, I am only a fan after all, i'm not an aerodynamic expert, neither do I claim to be so... but I couldn't help but notice simularities, and it got me thinking.

Comments/thoughts welcome. Please do not flame me for starting this thread, there is no hidden sick agenda.

[mhferrari]

Senna's incident, I strongly believe was due to the steering wheel.
But, I would say that it is possible that Schumacher's incident could be attributed to what Williams said occured to Senna.
Unfortunately, I have not seen the incident, which would greatly attribute to the decision of whether it indeed happen to Schumacher.

[Yelnats]

Having seen the race live from Schumachers following car (and watched the tape many times) I at first thought Senna must have suffered a stroke or been rendered unconsious by some other mechanisim. I thirty years of race watching I had never seen a car just follow a tangent straight off the track the way his did. Subsequently investigation and Senna's in car video convinced me that it was a loss of steering. This would not be the first time a driver has lost control in this manner but in the other case it was a premature release of the steering wheel removal mechanisim.

To get back to your excellent question.... A loss of down force on the rear would generate some rotational moment as the car left the track (a spin). In Sennas case there was no spin and his car left the road as though he had taken his hands of the wheel. So I doubt very much that it was the same type of problem that Schumacher experienced at Monza