Word: formulaically
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...rhythmic requiem for the hero who lay within, one of Brazil's greatest heroes and among the fastest men on wheels on earth -- Ayrton Senna da Silva, dead at 34, killed in a Formula One crash at the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola, Italy. In his 10 years of Grand Prix competition, the Brazilian had won 41 races and three world championships. Senna would be mourned officially for three days, declared President Itamar Franco. On the flight home from Europe, Senna's coffin, curtained off in the business-class section, had already become a shrine as passengers came...
Amid the grief there was also anger. Though Senna himself was famously fatalistic about his participation in a sport in which speeds of more than 180 m.p.h. are not uncommon, there were those who thought he had died needlessly. No one had been killed in a Formula One race for 12 years, yet at San Marino alone there were five accidents and two deaths. The day before Senna missed a turn and drove his Williams-Renault into a concrete wall, Austrian rookie Roland Ratzenberger had perished in a similar accident during qualifying trials...
Many of the drivers on the Grand Prix circuit blamed a spate of crashes this season on an effort by the International Federation of Automobiles (FIA), Formula One's Paris-based governing body, to sharpen competition by banning the use of high-tech devices thought to give the richer racing teams an unfair advantage. In doing so, the drivers charged, the federation had made the sport far more dangerous. Senna himself had expressed misgivings even before the start of the season. "It's a great error to remove the electronics from the cars," he said. "The cars are very fast...
Federation officials insisted that the rule changes had nothing to do with the deaths of Senna and Ratzenberger -- a view supported by some Formula One engineers. But in Brazil the fans were not listening to explanations. Some of those who filed past Senna's coffin carried placards calling the federation ASSASSINOS. Senna's younger brother Leonardo blamed the FIA as well as Formula One team owners, insinuating that they cut back on safety measures to make races more exciting and thus attract more spectators. "In Formula One it seems people only think about money," he said...
...made was one designed to improve safety in the pits -- a reaction to a relatively minor mishap in which a wheel flew off a car and hurtled into the Ferrari pit, injuring three mechanics. The federation also announced that it would study the possibility of installing speed controls on Formula One cars, and that it would consider requiring the installation of air bags to prevent the kind of head injuries that apparently killed Ratzenberger and Senna. After the race, Italian officials launched an investigation to see whether the sponsors of the Imola race should be held criminally responsible for failing...