Motor Racing: Mosley denies safety standards are slipping: The president of the sport's governing body resists snap judgements. Paul Newman reports

IT HAD been one of the blackest weekends in the history of motor racing, but the head of the sport's governing body was adamant yesterday that the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at the San Marino Grand Prix were a tragic coincidence, not a sign of slipping safety standards.

'Nothing has changed since a week ago, except that we've had these two tragedies and one very near-miss,' Max Mosley, president of the international automobile federation (FIA), said, referring both to the two fatalities and the horrifying accident suffered in practice by Rubens Barrichello.

'It's no more dangerous or no safer than it was a week ago and if you're responsible for safety, which we are, you can never be happy

unless you can say it's completely safe. It's not completely safe and therefore we're not happy, but the fact that we've managed to go 12 years without a fatality argues that we've got a very high standard of safety. But it is still not safe and arguably it may never be.'

He added: 'Everybody felt sooner or later there would be an

accident, but to have two fatalities in one weekend, that is something that has not happened since the dark ages. It is profoundly shocking, but one has to keep a very calm

approach to it and simply look at the facts of each one. It may just be coincidence, and all the evidence at the moment is that it is two very

unfortunate coincidences, but we must study all the facts and draw a rational conclusion.'

Mosley, speaking at the FIA's offices in central London, was particularly keen to scotch suggestions that changes introduced this season may have contributed to the accidents. Under the new rules, active suspension and computerised traction control - which help drivers to negotiate corners - have been banned, but Mosley insisted: 'We don't know exactly what caused the accidents, but we do know that neither of those were a factor.

'There's a tendency when these things happen for people to rush round looking for the most obvious explanation, but everyone that understands the cars a little bit knows that's just a red herring. Whatever the causes of all three accidents, none of those changes have anything to do with them whatsover.'

Black boxes, similar to those used in aircraft, will be examined in an

attempt to discover the causes of the crashes. 'There is a very strong possibility that the Ratzenberger crash was caused by a mechanical failure,' Mosley said. 'The Senna crash is much more complex and is being

analysed and no one is in a position to offer an informed opinion.'

Mosley was asked if Senna might have lost control because of a bump on the corner where he crashed. 'You can't say that you can eliminate that possibility. If, for example, the car was set too low or the tyre pressures were too low or somebody made a mistake of some kind, then that could happen. There may or there may not be evidence for that, but it's nothing to do with active suspension.'

Would active suspension have allowed the car to ride over any bumps more efficiently? 'That is undoubtedly true, but that really is not the point. The point is that you set the car up for the track. And nobody knew that better than Senna. Also, he'd been over that bump I don't know how many times in practice. So had everybody else. If there had been some inherent problem it would have appeared sooner.'

Mosley said there was no evidence that any debris had been left on the track after the accident at the start of the race. He also thought it unlikely that Senna had crashed because his tyres had not warmed up properly and were running at low pressure because of the delay. Drivers, he said, would have been aware of the state of their tyres.

He pointed out that FIA safety officials had been satisfied with the track at Imola and said that until now there had been no complaints about it. 'Everbody's happy to test there. All the teams are booked for a major test there this week. They all wanted to go there. No driver has ever said to me: 'I think Imola is dangerous'. No team manager has ever said it's dangerous.'

Both Senna and Ratzenberger died after crashing into walls. Was there a case for removing all perimeter walls at grand prix circuits

beyond a reasonable run-off area? 'Up to a point. Everything with a wall depends on angles. If you hit the wall at too steep an angle then you will hurt yourself. If you glance the wall, you won't. For example, at Indianapolis they have accidents at even higher speeds. The cars are no stronger, but as long as they get the angle right they usually get away with it.'

Mosley insisted that the views of drivers on safety were always welcomed. 'I never ever refuse to take a call from a driver or to see one,' he said. 'But to be perfectly frank the only driver who in the last six months has taken the trouble to ring me or come to see me about safety is Gerhard Berger. Nobody else has bothered.'

However, he did not feel that drivers were necessarily showing any lack of responsibility. 'If you said to a racing driver: 'Here are two cars. This one is completely safe and this one is extremely dangerous, but the dangerous one is five seconds a lap quicker than the safe one', there is not a single grand prix driver who would get in the safe car. And the day that they would get in the safe car they would have to give up.

'It's not their responsibility. Their responsibility is to drive the car as fast as they can. It's our responsibility to see that they do so in the highest degree of safety that it's possible to achieve.'

(Photograph omitted)