My Jochen Rindt Homepage
Personal Notes:
Karl Jochen Rindt grew up with his grandparents just a few blocks away from where I lived with my parents in Graz , Austria . When he started racing successfully I was less than 10 years old, so I never met him in person. I know him only from the media: radio, newspaper, and later TV. Other than the fact that Jochen was one of my two childhood heroes I have no right or competence to maintain this homepage. The other, by the way, was my uncle who let me drive his 500cc FIAT sitting on his lap when I was about ten. I guess we are more impressible when we are young.
I remember well that Aug. 22/23 weekend in 1965. My Uncle and I were washing his car when Jochen was interviewed on the Radio before the Austrian Grand Prix in Zeltweg, just a few miles from the house of my grandmother. By the time we had waxed and polished the car Jochen had won the race in a Ferrari 250 LM ahead of Mike Parkes in a Ferrari 365 P2 which, on paper, was the favorite but had to stop for fuel.
Winning in an inferior car was not untypical for Jochen. It started 1962 in Aspern where his Alfa Romeo Giulia TI beat over 3 liter Jaguars in a saloon car race. It should be mentioned that Jochen had bought this Conrero prepared car from Ossi Vogl, an Alfa dealer in Graz, who promised him free technical support provided he did reasonably well with it. Well, the dealer had to live up to his promise!
It was repeated together with Masten Gregory at a much more
prestigeous event: Le Mans 1965 and the NART entered Ferrari 250LM
. Jochen was the first Austrian to win Le Mans. Helmut Marko (1971) and
A. Wurz (1996) would follow his example. And Bob Tullius will explain
to
you, on one of 
the tapes listed below, why he did not cross
the finish line first at the first Trans Am race ever, 1966 at Sebring
. Jochen won in an Alfa GTA ,
running ahead of everybody else even though he was not payed to win
outright!
(see: http://trans-amseries.com/history.html)
Jochen Rindt seemed to have been extremely hard on his machinery, to say the least, particularly in his early days. He gained this reputation particularly during the three years with Cooper where he tried very hard to keep up with competition in superior cars, people which he would defeat routinely in Formula II events. Either the car broke or he put it somewhere near the very front by the end of the race.
Reading H. Prueller's book it seems that all Austrians from the Graz region have similar life experiences. From broken legs from skiing accidents to motorcycle races. The Ries has always been one of my favorites and everytime I visit home I make sure I have a few runs over it. Bored by the driving situation in Illinois I even took a three day race car driving course; well, and speeding tickets we all collect!
There are many anecdotes about Jochen (I cannot guarantee the correctness or accuracy of any of them):
Jochen once owned a white 3.8 E-Type Jaguar ( not his and not a 3.8 - but a Coupe and white - and mine ) which was giving him all sorts of problems, such as constant overheating (no surprise with this combination of car and driver) which prompted Jochen to call it a German slang word equivalent to "toilet", which I will not print here. However, owning three E-Types myself, I can see his point.Jochen supposedly collected quite a number of speeding tickets during the early stages of his career when his "practice sessions" were held on twisty public roads, of which there were many around Graz. Many of them were run against his friend Helmut Marko. Rumor has it that they did Graz-Bruck, a 50 km run, in about the same time you can do it now mostly on Autobahn bypassing all the little villages and going through tunnels, provided you can go the speed limit all the way. Similarly, he practiced with his E-Type at Monaco late in the evening prior to a Formula Junior race.
Things changed once he had made a name of himself, at least within Austria. One late evening on the old road from Graz to Bruck, he was stopped for speeding. When the officer recognized Jochen he smiled and let him go wishing him good luck in his races to come.
For Austrian TV, it seemed that Heinz Prueller had the exclusive right to interview Jochen Rindt. Usually somewhere close to high--revving race car engines, Jochen with cotton in his ears and Prueller screaming questions into his microphone, more "Brueller" than Prueller. Although arguably Niki Lauda and, depending on how you count, Gerhard Berger were/are more successful in F1, none of them stirred our souls quite like Jochen.
Technically, of course, Jochen was German, his father was German, his mother Austrian, however, he raced under Austrian licence. But as far as I am concerened Jochen was Austrian through and through: he could exhibit extreme arrogance and juvenile "Uebermut", but could also be quite sentimental. Regardless of his external displays, he was certainly serious about racing.
When asked by an Austrian Reporter during practice for Le Mans 1965 how he got along with Masten Gregory, Jochen laughed and supposedly replied half joking: "What do you mean, your codriver is your worst enemy!"
To Roy Salvadori who was his team manager during his Cooper days
he once supposedly said: "The most charming thing about you is your
wife."
It seems that either you liked him or you hated him, and he was
the same with people around him. Although successful in business (he
had his own race car show and his own F2 racing team in 1970) he was
probably not very diplomatic on a personal level. He certainly said
what was on his mind, ultimately justified or not. This did not go well
with many around him.
On the other hand, he was a close friend of Jackie Stewart, Jack
Brabham,
Piers Courage and others who were his main opponents. Would anybody
call
any two among N. Mansell, M. Schumacher, D. Hill, A. Prost, or the late
A. Senna good friends?
