Neil Bramwell Speaks Out

IMAGINE this fictitious and horrific scenario at Hockenheim last Sunday.

Carl Fogarty and his good friend and Ducati colleague Neil Hodgson enter one of the final bends wheel to wheel in a thrilling finish to a Superbikes race.

Minuscule precision and the instincts of a genuine genius are needed for Fogarty to steam through on the inside to clinch victory.

But - disastrously - their tyres touch and both riders slide off suffering dreadful injuries.

Happily, that was not the case.

And while Hodgson was fairly robbed of his first Superbikes victory, he would obviously have settled for his eventual eighth place rather than eight weeks in a coma.

The illustration - admittedly but unashamedly morbid - serves to ram home the incredibly fine line between glory and gore in the cut and thrust world of motor sport. That, of course, has never been in doubt and is the essence of the sport's compulsive attraction.

What is now in doubt, though, thanks to the moronic and repulsive trial of Frank Williams for the manslaughter of Ayrton Senna is whether the sport is ruled by its own governing body or the wider laws of the land.

And that question should leave everyone connected with motor sport quaking in their boots in pondering that question.

Manslaughter is a criminal charge and, for any criminal charge to stick, intent has to be proved.

The very suggestion that Williams intended to harm the Brazilian is totally absurd.

Even if Senna's death on May 1, 1994, at the San Marino Grand Prix was found to be due faulty workmanship, the recriminations have no place in a court of law.

All racers are aware that their lives are in the hands of their teams. And if the driver does not feel comfortable with safety standards he can refuse to race or move to another team.

The fact that these machines test the boundaries of engineering excellence automatically infers that the chance of error and malfunction is greater, again adding to the overall thrill package.

Yes, if negligence can be pinpointed in the Senna or any other case, then there should be punishment.

But it should be confined within the sport or that particular team and not in the criminal courts.

Even if some kind of cover-up emerges from the Senna trial in Imola, then the ultimate sanction for the culprits should only be a lifetime ban from motor sport.

Otherwise, if the courts become an increasingly easy option then the logical progression would be for one of the riders involved in the above hypothetical Superbikes crash to be charged with criminally reckless driving.

Giving riders one more reason for extra caution in such incredible manoeuvres would kill the spectacle.

And I am sure that the last thing Ayrton Senna would want is his own death to prompt the death of racing.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.