Jochen Rindt

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Jochen Rindt
Rindt at 1970 Dutch Grand Prix (2B).jpg
Rindt in 1970
Born Karl Jochen Rindt
(1942-04-18)18 April 1942
Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
Died Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Autodromo Nazionale Monza, Lombardy, Italy
Formula One World Championship career
Nationality Austria Austrian1
Active years 19641970
Teams Rob Walker (Privateer Brabham),
Cooper, Brabham, Lotus
Entries 62 (60 starts)
Championships 1 (1970)
Wins 6
Podiums 13
Career points 107 (109)[1]
Pole positions 10
Fastest laps 3
First entry 1964 Austrian Grand Prix
First win 1969 United States Grand Prix
Last win 1970 German Grand Prix
Last entry 1970 Italian Grand Prix
24 Hours of Le Mans career
Participating years 19641967
Teams NART
Comstock Racing
Porsche
Best finish 1st (1965)
Class wins 1 (1965)

Karl Jochen Rindt (18 April 1942 – 5 September 1970) was a German-born racing driver who represented Austria during his career.[2] He is the only driver to posthumously win the Formula One World Drivers' Championship (in 1970), after being killed in practice for the Italian Grand Prix. He competed in 62 Grands Prix, winning six and achieving 13 podium finishes. Away from Formula One, Rindt was highly successful in other single-seater formulae, as well as sports car racing. In 1965 he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans race, driving a Ferrari 250LM in partnership with Masten Gregory from the United States of America. He was a close friend to Jackie Stewart, and was a neighbour to the Scotsman in Switzerland.

Biography

Jochen Rindt was born in Mainz, Germany, to an Austrian mother and German father, but his parents were killed in a bombing raid in Hamburg during the Second World War,[3] when he was just one year old. He was thus raised by his grandparents in Graz, Austria, where he grew up and started motor racing. His grandfather, a lawyer, opted for Rindt to maintain German citizenship, but Rindt drove his entire career under an Austrian racing licence [4] and is buried in Graz.

Despite being very successful in Formula Two (by winning for instance the 1964 London Trophy at Crystal Palace), Rindt kept on choosing the wrong Formula One cars. Rindt made his Formula One debut for the Rob Walker Racing Team in the 1964 Austrian Grand Prix. It was to be his only Grand Prix of the year. From 1965 to 1967, Rindt raced for Cooper, scoring 32 points in 29 races. In 1968, Rindt raced for Brabham, but his season was not what he had hoped for because of technical problems. He also raced in the Indianapolis 500 in both 1967 and 1968, but finished no better than 24th.

Rindt was noted for being an exceptionally fast driver with superb car control and reflexes, but rarely had a car equal to his talent until 1969 when he moved to Lotus and his career took off. Rindt clinched the first Grand Prix victory of his career in the 1969 Grand Prix of the USA in Watkins Glen. Rindt finished that year with 22 points, giving him fourth place in the Formula 1 World Championship. Rindt occasionally had a fraught relationship with Colin Chapman as he preferred a stable technological footing as opposed to Chapman's need to innovate and invent, but the two forged a successful partnership. Rindt's first victory in the 1970 season was at Monaco, where he advanced to second place due to the attrition of others and closed on Jack Brabham with such ferocity that he forced Brabham into an error and gained the victory on the last corner. With the Lotus 72 better sorted after anti-dive and anti-squat had been removed, Rindt won four Grands Prix in succession in the Netherlands, France, Britain and Germany.

Cooper-Maserati T86, of the type driven by Rindt in 1967

During practice for the 1970 Italian Grand Prix in Monza, near Milan, Chapman and Rindt agreed to follow the lead of Jackie Stewart (Tyrrell) and Denny Hulme (McLaren) and run without wings in an attempt to reduce drag and gain a higher top speed. The more powerful flat-12 Ferraris of Jacky Ickx and Clay Regazzoni had been up to 10 mph (16 km/h) faster than the Lotus at the previous race in Austria. Rindt's team mate John Miles was unhappy with the wingless setup in Friday practice, reporting that the car "wouldn't run straight". Rindt reported no such problems, and Chapman recalled that Rindt reported the car to be "almost 800 rpm faster on the straight" without wings.[5]

On the following day, Rindt ran with higher gear ratios fitted to his car to take advantage of the reduced drag, increasing the car's potential top speed to 205 mph (330 km/h).[6] On Rindt's fifth lap of the final practice session, Hulme, who was following, reported that under braking for the Parabolica corner, "Jochen's car weaved slightly and then swerved sharp left into the crash barrier."[7] A joint in the crash barrier parted, the suspension dug in under the barrier, and the car hit a stanchion head-on. The front end of the car was destroyed. Although the 28-year-old Rindt was rushed to hospital, he was pronounced dead. Rindt was in the habit of using only four points on the five point harness then available and did not wear the crotch straps, as he wanted to be able to get out of the car quickly in the event of fire. As a result, upon impact he slid under the belts and suffered fatal throat injuries. He was the second Lotus team leader to be killed in two years, as Jim Clark had been killed in 1968 in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim. An Italian court later found that the accident was initiated by a failure of the car's right front brake shaft, but that Rindt's death was caused by poorly installed crash barriers.[8]

Rindt is buried at the central cemetery (Zentralfriedhof) in Graz.

At the time he died Rindt had won five of that year's ten Grands Prix, which meant that he had a strong lead in the World Championship. At that stage he theoretically could have been overtaken by Ferrari driver Jacky Ickx. However Rindt's Lotus team mate who succeeded him, Emerson Fittipaldi, won the penultimate Grand Prix of the year at Watkins Glen, USA, depriving Ickx of the points he needed to win the title, and so Rindt became motor racing's only posthumous World Champion.[9] The trophy was presented to his Finnish widow Nina Rindt (née Lincoln), daughter of famous Finnish racer Curt Lincoln. Although popular legend has it that Jochen had already promised Nina he would retire from F1 if he won the world championship, he had changed his mind before Monza and had told Nina that he would continue in Formula 1 for at least one more season if he became World Champion.[10]

The penultimate corner at the Red Bull Ring in Austria is named after Rindt.

In addition to his achievements in F1, Rindt had success in sports car racing highlighted by co-driving to a win at the 1965 edition of the Le Mans 24 hours in a North American Racing Team sponsored Ferrari 250LM.

Rindt, the American Phil Hill and Britons Mike Hawthorn and Graham Hill (who also won the Indianapolis 500), are the only Formula 1 champions who have also won the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Gallery
Rindt at the 1965 German Grand Prix
Rindt driving a Lotus F2 car at the Nürburgring in 1970. 
Rindt heading to the Nürburgring box. 
Rindt at the 1970 Dutch Grand Prix
Rindt at the 1969 Dutch Grand Prix
Rindt in 1969. 

Racing record

Complete Formula One World Championship results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Year Entrant Chassis Engine 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 WDC Points[1]
1964 Rob Walker Racing Team Brabham BT11 BRM V8 MON NED BEL FRA GBR GER AUT
Ret
ITA USA MEX NC 0
1965 Cooper Car Company Cooper T73 Climax V8 RSA
Ret
13th 4
Cooper T77 Climax V8 MON
DNQ
BEL
11
FRA
Ret
GBR
14
NED
Ret
GER
4
ITA
8
USA
6
MEX
Ret
1966 Cooper Car Company Cooper T81 Maserati V12 MON
Ret
BEL
2
FRA
4
GBR
5
NED
Ret
GER
3
ITA
4
USA
2
MEX
Ret
3rd 22 (24)
1967 Cooper Car Company Cooper T81 Maserati V12 RSA
Ret
MON
Ret
CAN
Ret
13th 6
Cooper T81B Maserati V12 NED
Ret
BEL
4
FRA
Ret
USA
Ret
MEX
Cooper T86 Maserati V12 GBR
Ret
GER
Ret
ITA
4
1968 Brabham Racing Organisation Brabham BT24 Repco V8 RSA
3
ESP
Ret
MON
Ret
12th 8
Brabham BT26 Repco V8 BEL
Ret
NED
Ret
FRA
Ret
GBR
Ret
GER
3
ITA
Ret
CAN
Ret
USA
Ret
MEX
Ret
1969 Gold Leaf Team Lotus Lotus 49B Ford V8 RSA
Ret
ESP
Ret
MON NED
Ret
FRA
Ret
GBR
4
GER
Ret
ITA
2
CAN
3
USA
1
MEX
Ret
4th 22
1970 Gold Leaf Team Lotus Lotus 49C Ford V8 RSA
13
MON
1
BEL
Ret
1st 45
Lotus 72 Ford V8 ESP
Ret
Lotus 72C Ford V8 NED
1
FRA
1
GBR
1
GER
1
AUT
Ret
ITA
DNS
CAN USA MEX

Non-Championship Formula One results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Year Entrant Chassis Engine 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
1963 Jochen Rindt Cooper T67 Ford V8 LOM GLV PAU IMO SYR AIN INT ROM SOL KAN MED AUT
Ret
OUL RAN
1965 Cooper Car Company Cooper T77 Climax V8 ROC
7
SYR SMT
Ret
INT
Ret
Roy Winkelmann Racing Brabham BT16 BRM V8 MED
Ret
RAN
1966 Cooper Car Company Cooper T81 Maserati V12 RSA SYR INT
5
OUL
1967 Cooper Car Company Cooper T81 Maserati V12 ROC
Ret
SPR INT SYR OUL
6
ESP
1968 Brabham Racing Organisation Brabham BT26 Repco V8 ROC INT OUL
Ret
1969 Team Lotus Lotus 49B Ford V8 ROC
Ret
INT
2
MAD
Lotus 63 OUL
2
1970 Team Lotus Lotus 49C Ford V8 ROC
2
Lotus 72 INT
Ret
OUL
2

Notes

^1 — While Rindt raced with an Austrian licence, he had a German passport and never held Austrian nationality.

References

Footnotes
  1. 1.0 1.1 Until 1990, not all points scored by a driver contributed to their final World Championship tally (see list of points scoring systems for more information). Numbers without parentheses are Championship points; numbers in parentheses are total points scored.
  2. Aeiou Encyclopedia: "Rindt, Jochen"
  3. Nur auf der Rennstrecke sterblich
  4. Mappes-Niediek (2008) p. 35
  5. Prüller (1970) pp.192—193
  6. Prüller (1970) p.195
  7. Prüller (1970) p.199
  8. Nye (1986) p.69
  9. Rendall (2007) p.264
  10. http://www.uniquecarsandparts.com.au/race_drivers_jochen_rindt.htm
Sources
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Further reading

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External links

Sporting positions
Preceded by Winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans
1965 with:
Masten Gregory
Succeeded by
Bruce McLaren
Chris Amon
Preceded by Formula One World Champion
1970
Succeeded by
Jackie Stewart
Preceded by Formula One fatal accidents
5 September 1970
Succeeded by
Jo Siffert