Jochen Rindt – greatness cut short | Thank Frankel it’s Friday

I think most people interested in Formula 1 from that era know that he lost control of his Lotus 72 during practice for the 1970 Italian Grand Prix at Monza and hit the barrier on entry to the Parabolica. A smaller number will be aware that the 72 had inboard front brakes and that the shaft connecting one of the brakes to the wheel hub had failed. Fewer will know that Jochen had not done up his crotch strap because, like all drivers back then, his greatest fear in an accident was fire and he wanted to be able to get out as fast as possible. This, combined with the fact the pedal box was removed upon impact meant there was nothing to arrest his body and it was this that ultimately cost him his life. I suspect only a rather small number know he would likely still have lived had the barrier been properly secured, or that the Lotus was running without wings at Monza and was so aerodynamically unstable that Rindt’s team-mate John Miles described it as ‘the most awful race car I’ve ever driven’.

So many factors. Then again I think in that era plenty of people would have worried about Rindt’s ability to survive a sport in its most lethal era. Later that day Jacky Ickx would take pole at an average speed of almost 153mph. The cars were brutally fast, the circuits entirely unforgiving so the only thing a driver could do was drive accordingly. Or not. And Rindt was very much in this latter category. Throughout his career he lived life behind the wheel absolutely on and frequently beyond the technical limit. Which meant when something went wrong, there was simply no margin.

He was clearly aware of it himself which is why, as a new father, he was planning to quit racing at the end of the season. By then he would be World Champion and have proven to all he was the best of his era with the only possible exception being his great rival and even greater friend Jackie Stewart.

And even though the title would eventually be his, I still think he was better than his record suggests. With Mike Hawthorn, Hills Phil and Graham and Fernando Alonso, he is for instance one of just five drivers to win both Le Mans and the F1 world title. Moreover while the others on the list won Le Mans in state of the art factory cars run by works teams, Rindt won in 1965 in a privately entered Ferrari that no one before the race would have bet a single cent on taking victory.

He was also terribly unlucky at the top level. He spent the first three seasons of his career driving uncompetitive Coopers, before joining Brabham whose Repco engines were not only no match for Cosworths used by Lotus, McLaren and Matra, but were also plagued by unreliability. Of the 12 races he did, he finished just two but was on the podium for both.

Only when he joined Team Lotus in 1969 did his true form really become apparent. Rounded to the nearest whole number, on average that season Jochen qualified second on the grid, team mate Graham Hill down in seventh. That’s reigning World Champion Graham Hill. And the following year he had the revolutionary Lotus 72. Even without it, driving the obsolete Lotus 49C he still managed to take an extraordinary win in Monaco, smashing the lap record as he chased down Jack Brabham, pressuring the triple World Champion into a last corner mistake. But once the 72 was running properly, he was unstoppable as consecutive wins at Zandvoort, Clermont-Ferrand, Brands Hatch and the Nürburgring attest. He took pole in Austria but his Cosworth broke in the race, and then came Monza.

Jochen Rindt was only 28 when he died and is now most famous for being F1’s only posthumous World Champion. What could he have gone onto achieve? Well that depends on all sorts of things, not least whether he really would have retired. If not it is at least worth pointing out that the Lotus 72 not only won the Constructors title for Lotus that year (with a little help from the 49), but in two of the next three years as well. It could have been extraordinary.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.