‘A Massarella, by the looks of things,’ said Straker, backing up the clip. ‘Have we got anything to check the spectators from on-board that car?’
‘Hang on. Yes, here we go — facing both backward and forward.’
They started with the rearward footage.
It showed a shot over and through the rear wing of the Massarella as it cruised slowly on an in-lap up the Kemmel Straight, along the channel-like passage through the trees. Looming in the distance, and closing up fast, came — head-on — the brilliant-turquoise shape of Sabatino’s Ptarmigan as she hurtled up the hill towards the car-borne camera. In a matter of moments, it had shot past, out of the picture to the right.
‘Okay, there were some spectators visible there, but they’re too far in the distance to be studied properly. What about the forward view from the Massarella?’ prompted Straker.
They found that segment on another disc, from further back along the Kemmel Straight.
This showed the front end of the black Massarella, as it slowly approached the corner on the inside of the circuit, with the back of Adi Barrantes’s helmet — in the sky-blue and white of the Argentine flag — occupying the top right of the screen. One hand could be seen on the steering wheel.
A moment later the stricken Ptarmigan flashed into the left-hand side of the shot, already snaking violently as it hurtled past, off the track, heading to bounce over the kerbstones. Once again, spotting for spectators on the left-hand bank was not easy, given the distraction of the out-of-control car.
‘Wow, it still doesn’t lose any of its drama,’ said Treadwell.
Straker frowned. ‘We’ve got poor sight of the spectators before the incident — backwards from the Massarella — and very little after the incident — forward from the Massarella, let alone anything of the crowds level with Remy at the exact moment of the incident. Is there any shot that shows the crowd directly opposite the crash site?’
‘Afraid not.’
A few minutes later there was a knock on the door of the motor home. One of Beauregard’s people was standing there with a box of DVDs. Taking delivery, Straker immediately searched the collection to support their scan of the spectators. He found CCTV material that might work. It was shot from a gantry halfway down the Kemmel Straight directly opposite the bank of spectators, pointing across the circuit from the inside, outwards and towards Les Combes.
‘Okay, let’s see if we can study the crowds from this angle,’ said Straker.
They started to run it. ‘This looks promising,’ offered Sabatino.
But instead of studying the clear shot of the spectators on the bank overlooking the track, their eyes were, inextricably, drawn to the fishtailing Ptarmigan again, its violent changes of direction appearing even more disturbing when seen from above and behind.
Straker asked them to run through the clip again, this time in slow motion. As it ran, they stopped the video and zoomed in on a couple of potential suspects among the crowds, but it was clear they all looked completely disinterested in the drama on the circuit below them.
‘There are several hundred people on the grass there, but none of them really sparks suspicion.’
‘Agreed.’
To make sure, they ran through the footage a third time, this time frame by frame.
After a few minutes, two of the Ptarmigan team suddenly emitted grunts simultaneously. ‘Hang on, wait a second! What was that?’
Treadwell tapped the space bar on the computer. ‘We haven’t seen that before.’
‘Seen what?’ asked Straker.
‘Back it up, back it up!’
The footage was run again. Sabatino peered at the screen. ‘There — stop!’
She clearly wasn’t looking at the spectators.
The screen was frozen. It was a grainy image. Focus was poor, but the two cars could be seen — as blurs — side by side. Something eye-catching stood out against the grainy shapes in the image: a bright red light on the back of Sabatino’s car.
‘Well blow me!’ said Treadwell. ‘Blink and you’d miss that.’
‘Miss what?’ asked Straker.
‘Her light’s come on.’
Straker looked puzzled. ‘Don’t lights come on when you brake?’
Sabatino almost bawled: ‘Hell no! F1 cars don’t even have brake lights. That’s a high-intensity rain light — comes on when the visibility closes in.’
‘A fog light?’
‘Sort of — activated by a humidity and moisture sensor which … wait a second, that doesn’t make any sense. It was sunny and dry all afternoon. But,’ said Sabatino raising her voice — as if a realization was striking, ‘our cars also activate that rain light automatically with the engine limiter when we’re forced to slow down — to go slower than eighty kilometres an hour in the pit lane!’
Treadwell, Backhouse and Sabatino all looked at each other. ‘Fuck, does that mean the engine limiter cut in?’
There was a buzz around the table.
Straker sensed they might be getting somewhere at last. Stepping back in to the discussion, he said: ‘Okay, good, but we need to be robust here. Could that light have been activated by the jolt — would that have been enough to light it up? If not, were the light’s sensors working properly? Can we see if the light came on at any other time today? Can we see whether the engine limiter was — or wasn’t — working properly, and then can we see whether the limiter system was indeed activated at that critical moment?’
Treadwell nodded. ‘That’s logical, and disciplined, thinking, Matt. We’ll get all the relevant data and check everything out.’
Production of the reports was delegated to different team members around the table, all of whom got up and went straight to work.
Straker was distracted from the bustling activity around the motor home by his ringing phone. It was Maurice Beauregard. He sounded disappointed. The sniffer dogs had completed their sweep of the area around Les Combes but had not found anything in the woods on the hillside above that part of the circuit. Although a dead end, Straker was far from disappointed. He was confident the dogs would have found something had there been a presence in the woods above the track. A sizeable area of ground could now reasonably be eliminated as the possible location of his unknown radio signal. He thanked the Belgian profusely — both for the police search and also for the CCTV footage.
Ten minutes later the findings of the research into the engine limiter were ready to be presented to the team.
‘The engine sensors were fine,’ confirmed Backhouse. ‘Coolant, camshaft, oxygen. The rain light didn’t come on because of faulty sensors.’
‘I can confirm the light didn’t come on because of the jolt or vibration of the incident,’ reported Treadwell.
‘Its illumination was linked directly to the engine limiter,’ declared Sabatino. ‘And, yes, the engine limiter was active for the duration of the incident — but had not been triggered by me.’
Straker sensed an agreement around the meeting room table. ‘So we are confident to conclude, then, that the engine limiter was on, but not activated by us — either deliberately or by accident?’
‘Absolutely,’ stated Backhouse.
‘And if the engine limiter was activated — out on the track — at that speed, we’d expect the effects to be as they occurred?’
Backhouse and Sabatino nodded repeatedly. ‘Almost identical. Having found this,’ he said, ‘the incident now makes much more sense.’