Remembering Jochen Rindt’s Championship Year

For the 1970 Grand Prix season, and still in my very early 20s, I was again a number two mechanic on Jochen Rindt’s car—he was now the number one driver for Gold Leaf Team Lotus. Eddie Dennis was the number one mechanic and my immediate boss. As a mechanic, I knew Jochen was always giving 100 percent behind the wheel. I found him to be a very straightforward man, I would describe him as a rather simple driver who would drive around problems he had with the car. He wouldn’t “dick around,” he had complete trust and confidence in Colin Chapman to deal with technical issues, although there were a couple of occasions where that trust and confidence were tested—particularly with the Lotus 63 fwd car, which both Graham (Hill) and Jochen had publicly described as being too dangerous to drive.  For me, the 63 was one of the hardest cars to work on, and although the history of four-wheeled drive was something of a white elephant, Chapman had to do it as other teams such as McLaren, Matra, and even Cosworth were looking at it—fortunately, from my point of view, it failed again.

The season started quite badly for us; no points in South Africa, a glimmer of hope came with a 2nd place at the non-championship Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, with the 49. As we were working until all hours trying to get the 72 ready for its Grand Prix debut at Jarama, sleep wasn’t something we took. So tired were we that several of us passed out at the factory, including me and Eddie Dennis, too. We had entered three cars, one 49 for Alex Soler-Roig and two 72s for Jochen and John Miles. Jochen was the sole qualifier for the race, in 8th place. On the first lap there was an inferno after Oliver’s BRM had a problem, slid off the track and then back on, colliding and T-boning the Ferrari of Jacky Ickx. The result was complete chaos, firemen were squirting foam at the two flaming cars over the top of those still racing. After a while the two cars, still on fire, began to slide across the track onto the racing line and into the path of cars still circulating—absolute chaos. Even today, I still can’t understand why they didn’t red-flag the race. Fortunately, Jochen wasn’t tangled up in that mess, although he retired after just a few laps with engine problems.