Regarding Senna, there was no steering column failure. It was a bogus and ........ argument the Italian Courts put forth that had no basis in reality. What was known in F1, but no one dared to say it less they ruin the image of Senna and everyone realized he wasn't perfect.
The Williams FW16 was a problematic car from inception. The ban on active suspension hurt Williams more than any other team and they had to relearn how to design and build a car with a normal sprung suspension. That meant the initial design was a handful. It was prone to understeer and oversteer and was not working as well as intended on the aero side. Senna had DNF's in the first two races of the season and went to Imola with 0 points. He responded to the pressure and the ill-handling car the way he normally did going back to his days at Lotus in 1985, he had the car ride height set as low as they could go. He did this as a response to handling issues as a way to try and get around them. The issue with Imola was the run through the Tamburello by that time in 1994 had repaved strips running through the corner on the racing line. The surface was very uneven there that could upset race cars. What unfolded that day was a perfect storm. Senna was desperate to claw into Schumacher's lead in the championship standings, while dealing with a car who's lastest round of chassis upgrades that weekend still hadn't alleviated issues, and dealing with the belief that he was competing against an illegal car in Schumacher's Benetton B194. When the start of the race wasn't red-flagged after the Lamy/Lehto shunt, he cycled for 5 laps behind the safety car, and finally gets the restart on lap 6. He set the 3rd fastest time of the race on a restart lap which still amazes me to this day. On lap 7, he goes off the track into the wall at the Tamburello. What happened was the ride height of the FW16 did him in. He got the surfboard effect that happens when the underside dragged on the ground through the corner due to the uneven pavement. On lap 6 a huge shower of sparks flew out from his car, a sign of the car bottoming out. Right before his car veered off the track, the underside sparked, not as much as it did on lap 6, but enough. Schumacher himself remarked that Senna nearly lost the car on lap 6 but held it, and that the car did not look stable through that corner. Instead of taking the approach Alain Prost would have taken, that being collecting points till the team finally got everything sorted out, he wouldn't have put so much pressure on himself to win at Imola. He made a bad decision with the setup of the Williams based on the nature of Imola at that time. Before the race, he even warned teammate Damon Hill to take a wider line through the Tamburello due to the bumps in the corner. He didn't follow his own advice. Like I said, he didn't deserve to die for it, but he did contribute to his own death.
