NOVEMBER 24, 1997

Summing-up at Imola

ORESTE DOMINIONI, the chief defense lawyer representing Williams in the Senna manslaughter trial in Italy, last week summed up the defense case and called on Judge Antonio Costanzo to drop charges against engineers Patrick Head and Adrian Newey. The prosecutor recently asked Costanzo to drop the charges against Frank Williams and the three race officials (Roland Bruynseraede, Federico Bendinelli and Giorgio Poggi) but said that he wanted one-year suspended sentences for Head and Newey.

In a five-hour attack on the prosecution case Dominioni said that the technical advisers used had provided only guesses and that the prosecution case was not based on any facts.

Costanzo will now retire to consider the case and will give his verdict in mid-December.