Fate Favouring Rindt

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32381, 21 August 1970, Page 18

Fate Favouring Rindt

Fate appears to be favouring Jochen Rindt in this year’s world racing driver’s championship, for three of his five wins have come in close finishes in which he has snatched the lead with the Gold Leaf Team Lotus 72 Cosworth-Ford V 8 in the last lap, the latest being an O.7sec lead over the Belgian Ferrari team leader, Jack Ickx, at the finish of the German Grand Prix. Earlier in the season Rindt snatched victory from the triple champion, Jack Brabham, within yards of the finish of the Monaco Grand Prix when the Australian spun his Brabham in the last corner.

In the British Grand Prix Brabham was leading by X3sec when, just before the last corner, his engine misfired through lack of petrol and the Austrian shot through ,to win. Rindt, who has won five of the eight races held so far in this year’s 12-race series, has 45 points to the 25 of Brabham, while the New Zealander, Denny Hulme, who leads the McLaren team, has 20 and the 1960 world champion, Jackie Stewart, has 19. On the face of it, Rindt looks set to take the title, although with four races yet to be decided Brabham Hulme, Stewart and pos-

sibiy Chris Amon, the New Zealander who leads the March team and has 14 points, must be conceded a chance. If Kindt does win the championship it will be a truly international success. German-born, but brought up from infancy by his maternal Austrian grandparents in Vienna, Rindt is driving a British-designed and built car, with an engine financially backed by the American Ford company and shod with American Firestone tyres. Moreover, a Lotus victory would almost certainly give the Lotus chief, Colin Chapman, his fourth Formula 1 racing car manufacturers' championship, for the late Jim Clark was the architect for Lotus successes in 1963 and 1965 and Graham Hill was responsible for the other in 1968. The next round will be the Italian Grand Prix at Monza on September 6 after which the scene will shift to North America for the Canadian, United States and Mexican races.