Friday 9th December 1994

The lid finally came off the simmering debate over who was to blame for the Ayrton Senna’s fatal crash the previous May, with comments in a Sunday newspaper by lead investigator Professor Enrico Lorenzini. Steering failure of some form was until then the favoured explanation, but Lorenzini was quoted as saying: “The rod joining the steering wheel to the wheels was virtually sliced in half … it had been badly welded together about a third of the way down and could not stand the strain of the race. It seemed like the job had been done in a hurry but I can’t say how long before the race. Someone had tried to smooth over the join following the welding. I have never seen anything like it.” The debate went on for years but a criminal case in Italy ended with no blame attributed to any one individual.