Ayrton Senna has been dead for a generation, yet the cause of his accident remains a mystery.

The question is – does it matter?

Preface

I never met Ayrton Senna but I was a fan. Since his untimely death on May 1, 1994 at Imola, every book imaginable has already been written about him, except for one. The subject of that missing book is contentious because it addresses the fundamental question of what caused Senna’s car to veer off the track at 300km/h on Lap 7 of the San Marino Grand Prix.

“Tamburello” was conceived more than fifteen years ago as a private project to fulfil my own need for understanding. The original project had grown in fits and starts and lay dormant for over a decade until its resurrection when I was approached to publish again my old material on Imola ’94. What began as minor revision of a short article has metamorphosed into a book.

I’m painfully aware of the fact that – for many understandable reasons – the cause of Ayrton Senna’s accident remains a sensitive subject, but I feel an obligation towards the wider world to share what I’ve discovered.

Any inaccurate assumptions or misinterpretations of proprietary design specifications, measurement inaccuracies, errors and omissions are entirely mine.

Martin Zustak, December 2013.

Martin Zustak writes about motor racing, travel,science, and technology. He graduated from the Brno University of Technology, CZ, with a MEng in Electronics (1995) and also holds an MBA from Oxford Brookes University, UK (2003) and a diploma in creative writing from Long Ridge Writers Group, USA (2009).

Excerpt from “Tamburello” by Martin Zustak reproduced with the author’s permission. The complete book is available as FREE download below.

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