Imola at 20: Did the rule changes play a part in F1's horror weekend

By Simon Wright – Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

The fourth instalment of this special week of articles to commemorate the 20^th anniversary of Formula One’s darkest weekend involves a look into the rules and regulations that were enforced on the teams at the start of that fateful 1994 season.

It is unfair to say what caused the accident that killed Ayrton Senna. However, Senna for one did warn of concern at the changes made by the sport’s governing body that eliminated the electronic war and ensured driver skill returned to the cars. So, Imola at 20 continues with a look into the rule changes and how much of a part they played in the horror show that was the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

How complacent were the FIA?

The pinnacle of motorsport is Formula One. Teams come and go, drivers arrive and depart and circuits change and evolve over time. The same can be said for the cars designed to blast around some of the fastest tracks in the world.

The FIA had lost control of the costs that were engulfing teams. Five years before Imola 94, more than 40 cars were turning up at Grand Prix weekends, with only 26 of them to start the main event on a Sunday in 1989. Eight cars were already on their way home by the time pre-qualifying ended at 10am on a Friday morning! By 1994, that number had dwindled to just 28.

Two new teams arrived at the start of that particular season but in the previous four years, Brabham, March/Leyton House, Dallara, Fondmetal, AGS, Osella, EuroBrun, Coloni and Zakspeed had all collapsed as racing teams due to financial implications – whilst the historic Lotus team were in crippling debt and France’s number one team, Ligier needed Flavio Briatore’s help to save them from a similar fate.

Having let standards slip greatly when it came to budgets, sweeping rule changes were introduced for 1994. Electronic driver aids were all outlawed, including ABS braking, traction control and active suspension. Whilst the technological affect was making the sport less than appealing in the early 90s, was too much change at the same time too much?

Narrow escapes

Before Imola 94, Formula One had escaped the turbo era with a belief that it was almost impossible to die behind the wheel of a racing car. After the appalling 1982 championship, where two drivers died and Didier Pironi suffered career-ending injuries at Hockenheim, there had just been one fatality since and that was Elio de Angelis during a private test session in France four years later.

However, that didn’t mean to say there weren’t narrow escapes. Both Nelson Piquet and Gerhard Berger had humongous accidents at Imola on the Tamburello corner in the late 1980s that would claim Senna’s life. Erik Comas, Martin Donnelly and Alessandro Zanardi all cheated death in the early 90s and Riccardo Patrese walked away from this massive crash on the pitlane straight at Portugal’s Estoril circuit (video below) during the 1992 race.

There were a feeling though that the cars could be strong enough to anything thrown at them. This was probably part to luck, part to the hard safety work already in place by Professor Sid Watkins and also because of the electronics in the cars.

The active suspension system in particular when it worked did the job, made you fast and seemed to protect the driver from almost invincibility.

Electronic criticism

The competition became distorted when the clever designers at Williams pioneered the active suspension concept. In 1992, they produced a system that left the rest of the field standing. What it basically did was control each side of the car from four different angles and all the driver had to do was put his feet on the accelerator and brake pedal.

Nigel Mansell won the championship with a record (at the time) nine wins in the season but frankly, you could have put any average racing driver in that car and they would have also won the title by a country mile. By the start of 1993, it became clear that if you didn’t have the active suspension technology, you were basically beaten before the year had even begun.

Concerned about increasing corner speeds and pressure from teams who couldn’t develop such clever technology (McLaren being a prime example), active suspension was banned by the FIA at the end of the 1993 championship. When the car worked, it was fine but an active suspension failure for Zanardi during practice for the Belgian Grand Prix nearly killed him. FIA president Max Mosley’s concerns about the technology’s safety seemed to have been vindicated.

Senna was one of those who voiced his displeasure at this electronic war during his late McLaren days. He was fed up of driving his heart out and getting little reward for it. By the time he was off to Williams, his mind seemed to have changed.

Did traction control have to go?

Whilst the banning of active suspension was the only way forward for the sport at the time, traction control was another matter. Sure, it made an ugly noise when cars were braking into bends and accelerating away from them but making too much change sometimes doesn’t work and is extremely risky. The sense was that it was going to be difficult for the FIA to police this.

After early testing signs, despite being the pacesetter, Senna wasn’t happy and warned observers that this would be a season with a “a lot of accidents.” This was a man who wanted traction aids banned a year earlier but now with the team, who had pioneered such software, seemed to have had his head turned by his new employers.

The FIA did struggle to control the traction control effect. Accusations of cheating began from an early stage with Senna himself privately concerned that not all of the banned aids had been taken off the Benetton of Michael Schumacher, who had comfortably won the first two races of 1994. He asked his team principal Frank Williams to protest the results, which Frank decided not to do. Nevertheless, Benetton had now become public enemy number one and with Senna voicing his concerns in the build-up to the Imola race to the public, he had got the media on his side.

Michael Schumacher was the early 1994 pacesetter, but were Benetton bending the rules?

Whilst not fully proven, the allegation is Schumacher’s car (pictured above) had a traction control function within its system, behind a blank menu labelled ‘option 13.’ Anyone who saw his unbelievable getaway at the start of the French Grand Prix later in the year had every right to be further suspicious. Ferrari were also accused of cheating when test driver Nicola Larini made a remark a fortnight before Imola about switching off the car’s traction control system in Japan.

Therefore, whilst the FIA had been keen to get rid of all electronics with immediate effect, they only managed to open up a web of allegations, suspicion and criticism by getting rid of traction and launch control.

Did the rules play their part then?

1994 had already begun with a chain of crashes. JJ Lehto injured his neck heavily during a pre-season testing shunt at Silverstone, whilst Jean Alesi missed two races after damaging his back in a similar kind of crash at the Mugello circuit in Italy. Jos Verstappen, subbing for Lehto had been involved in a colossal multiple pile-up in the first race, with one of his Benetton wheels striking Martin Brundle’s helmet and an ambitious lunge on Karl Wendlinger during the race in Aida had seen Michele Alboreto ride over the Sauber’s front suspension.

The danger signs were there before Imola, so did the rules play their part in the weekend that claimed the life of a rookie and one of the greatest drivers of his generation?

Well many believe it played a role, but how much of a factor was it all? It is dangerous to say it was significant but the changes did make the cars far harder to drive which was fine but had made it much more difficult to control when it came to spins and accidents.

Changes were needed to bring driver skill back to the heart of the sport but perhaps too much alteration and the bickering from the teams, both mid-1993 and early 1994 had not helped in the lead-up to the Imola weekend.

The 1994 regulations were among the biggest and most complex of changes in the sport’s history. It is fair to say they weren’t very popular but to ensure the integrity of racing in later years, it was needed. It is a shame that the longer term benefits couldn’t be seen by all.

Categories: 1994, Accidents, Active Suspension, Ayrton Senna, Benetton, FIA, Imola, Rules, Traction Control, Weekend