Looking back on Jochen Rindt

Few drivers of the post-War Grand Prix era have prompted such debate over their talents as Karl Jochen Rindt, the arrogant, self-confident Austrian who claimed the sad distinction of becoming the sport’s first, and so far only, posthumous World Champion. It is 14 years ago this coming September since the 28-year-old Rindt crashed fatally under braking at Parabolica during final practice for the 1970 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, ending a spectacular, varied and inconsistent career which had started less than a decade before. This was the driver whose promise seemed somehow so certain never to be realised that MOTOR SPORT’s D.S. J. was prompted into betting his beard against Rindt ever winning a Grand Prix: when the Austrian’s Lotus 49 came home triumphant in the 1969 United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, our hirsute colleague willingly shaved himself. On a more personal note, Jochen Rindt was one of racing’s personalities who helped form the writer’s early impressions of the sport. It took a lot of cajoling for my father to be persuaded to drive himself and a friend, a few weeks prior to my long-awaited 17th birthday, to Crystal Palace for the Formula 2 London Trophy meeting at Whitsun, 1964. This was the event at which the little-known Austrian driver took his black Brabham-Cosworth SCA to a splendid victory over a host of established rivals including Jim Clark and Graham Hill. From that moment onwards, Rindt’s future seemed secure — certainly in my youthful eyes, at least!

Jochen Rindt was born in Mainz, Germany, on April 18, 1942 and after both his parents were killed in an Allied bombing raid when he was only 15 months old, he went to live with his maternal grandparents in the quiet Austrian city of Graz. From an early age the young Rindt was something of a rebel and it quickly became clear that he wasn’t going to take much interest in the family spice importing business, the Mainz-based firm of Klein and Rindt. He learnt to drive, below the legal age limit, at the wheel of an elderly Volkswagen and caused so much disruption at his local school that he was packed off to England as a teenager to learn English in Chichester.

Although Goodwood was uncomfortably close at hand, Jochen didn’t show much interest in motorised sports and it was only on his return to Austria that he really began to become interested in cars: his antics on the local roads round Graz in company with his friends (who included Helmut Marko, later to become a Ferrari sports car and BRM Grand Prix driver) were quite hair-raising and have been splendidly chronicled by his long time friend Heinz Pruller in his splendid book, Jochen Rindt — The Story of a World Champion (William Kimber, 1970).

“He spun wildly on the Masta straight in the height of the rain storm without so much as batting an eye-lid”

Rindt first came to prominence in 1963 when he decided to take the plunge into the cut and thrust of Formula Junior, acquiring an old Cooper and teaming up with fellow Austrian coming man Kurt Bardi-Barry. From the outset of his single-seater career Rindt was to demonstrate a distinctive brand of unrestrained, extrovert enthusiasm behind the wheel. He was obviously tremendously quick, and although he seemed to be in control, he was incredibly wild. He won his second-ever Formula Junior race with the Cooper, at Cesenatico in Italy, and later fitted a push-rod 1,500 cc Ford engine into the car in order to take part in the first Austrian Fl Grand Prix, a non-title event held on the old Zeltweg airfield circuit. For the 1964 season he graduated into Formula 2, buying a brand new Brabham-Cosworth SCA with some support from Ford Austria. It was with this machine that Rindt really made his name over the Whitsun weekend in the two well-publicised British Formula 2 races. He qualified on pole position at Mallory Park, finishing third in the race behind the works Lotuses of Jim Clark and Peter Arundell, but at Crystal Palace he astounded everybody by winning in brilliant style. One of the national daily papers reported him as being an Australian, presumably on the assumption that only the British Commonwealth could produce drivers of such apparently instant brilliance!

This success put Rindt firmly in the mainstream of international motor racing attention and it’s fair to say from this point onwards he never looked back. His first ride in a pukka Grand Prix car came in the ’64 Austrian Grand Prix where he handled Rob Walker’s Brabham-BRM V8. He failed to finish, but was clearly not daunted by racing’s senior category. For 1965 he was signed up to partner Bruce McLaren in the works Cooper team, but by this time the 1 1/2-litre machines from this marque were totally uncompetitive and Jochen salvaged only a fourth place at Nurburgring and a sixth at Watkins Glen for his efforts. There was success in other categories, however, most notably at Le Mans where he and Masten Gregory drove an obsolete NART Ferrari 250LM to a memorable victory. And, of course, he kept his hand in amongst his Formula 2 rivals, which at that time included most of the contemporary Grand Prix stars. Right up until the end of 1968 Rindt was to drive for the famous Winkelmann Racing F2 equipe, managed by his friend, the taciturn Alan Rees who is now a director of the Arrows Grand Prix team. The pint-sized Rees also drove with Rindt, frequently matching the Austrian in terms of speed, and occasionally beating him. When his Formula 1 fortunes were down, which was often, Rindt managed to keep his reputation alive by what amounted to near-total domination of Formula 2 for the best part of four seasons.

At the start of the three-litre Formula 1 in 1966 Rindt found himself armed with the ungainly looking Cooper-Maserati V12, a machine which generally performed rather better than its appearance might suggest. It was at the wheel of this device that Rindt began to lay the foundations of his briefly successful Grand Prix career, his most notable achievement probably being his Performance in the rain-soaked Belgian Grand Prix at Spa where he led John Surtees’ winning Ferrari 312 for many laps, eventually finishing second. Rindt’s “nerves of steel” were also emphasised when he spun wildly on the Masta straight in the height of the rain storm without so much as batting an eye-lid. Miraculously the Cooper didn’t hit a thing and Jochen simply continued at unabated speed! Throughout 1966 and ’67 Rindt never quite managed to grasp a Grand Prix victory, despite the fact that team-mates John Surtees and Pedro Rodriguez both made it to the winner’s circle. By the end of the ’67 programme Rindt was clearly looking for something more competitive with which finally to break out of this disappointing rut and, on the basis of its Championship-winning performances in the first two seasons of the new three-litre formula, there seemed few more promising berths than a place in the Brabham team. Thus Rindt signed to drive alongside “Black Jack” for the 1968 season, the two men quickly forging a warm and easy-going partnership based on mutual respect. Rindt was clever enough to appreciate Brabham’s shrewd ability when it came to organising the team while the Australian obviously rated Jochen’s talent behind the wheel. It should have been a successful combination. Unfortunately, the whole year turned out to be an unmitigated disaster largely thanks to the unreliability of the newly developed four-cam Repco V8 with which the Brabham team hoped to match the sensational Cosworth DFV. Rindt used a ’67-specification twin-cam Repco V8 to finish third in the opening race at Kyalami behind the Lotus 49s of Jim Clark and Graham Hill, but from that point onwards there was little to alleviate the all pervading gloom. There were brief flickers of Rindt’s tremendous talent: pole position by a huge margin at Rouen and third place at the rain-soaked Nurburgring, but otherwise the season was terrible. For 1969, despite offers from Brabham who was now determined to obtain Cosworth power for his cars, Jochen Rindt took the decision to sign for Colin Chapman’s Team Lotus.