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PICTURE TELLS TERRIBLE STORY
At first glance, nothing about this image (recently found in old Bulletin files) is at all remarkable:
Let’s take another look. The fellow on the left we might assume is a racing driver, given his clothing and the attached Dunlop/Ford insignias. Some will recognise him as Jackie Stewart, who retired from racing in 1973.
Dunlop withdrew from Formula One at the conclusion of the 1970 season, which helps narrow down the photograph’s likely date.
What about location? On the right we see a Vespa bearing Milanese plates (MI). We’re in Italy. And, noticing those crosses, outside a medical facility.
The woman with whom Stewart is speaking carries the sort of notebook used in that era to record lap times. She is Nina Rindt, wife of Jochen Rindt, an Austrian driver orphaned by Allied bombing in WWII.
Stewart was one of the first drivers to visit Rindt following an accident during qualifying for the 1970 Italian Grand Prix. One of Rindt’s legs had been torn away. Stewart observed that no blood was pulsing from the wound.
Awfully, heartbreakingly, we quite probably see here Stewart telling Nina Rindt that her husband is dead.
I was living in Germany when Rindt died, and remember it very well (I followed Formula One at the time). It was front-page news in all the papers.
Dunno if the Germans knew it or not, but it was also front-page news in the Stars and Stripes (U.S. military newspaper).
If that’s what this picture depicts, I don’t envy Jackie at all. Terrible thing to have to do.
Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 2006 04 10 at 02:53 PM • permalinkHere’s a good biography of Rindt:
Two really sad passages in that biography:
“The pressure began to tell on Rindt and he went to Monza for the Italian GP ready to clinch the World Championship that had for so long alluded him. Rindt by that time had decided to quit racing at the end of the season and talked about setting up a sports clothing business.”
“When Emerson Fittipaldi’s Lotus 72 beat the Ferraris in the US GP Rindt’s points lead in the title was secured. Karl Jochen Rindt became motor racing’s first and hopefully last posthumous World Champion.”
Posted by David Crawford on 2006 04 10 at 06:24 PM • permalinkImagine, it *probably* really is that amazing moment in history. Something to really make you stop and think. If this is anything to go by, that office must be literally overflowing with cultural curios just waiting to fascinate us anew. Good to see you’re not wasting business hours foraging through old filing cabinets and behind cupboards. A picture tells a thousand words, or in this case about seven.
Posted by Miranda Divide on 2006 04 10 at 08:44 PM • permalinkI have had to tell a woman that her husband was killed after an on-farm accident. It is something that you can never forget and you feel totally hopeless in trying to help this person.
The gentleman that Jackie is would have helped Nina Rindt but I can see why this would have lead Jackie to retire early.
#9, I couldn’t agree more, individual deaths are of no importance to *history*. And as for all that “foraging through old filing cabinets and behind cupboards,” well that is just what Stalin called “vulgar factology.” Now, had Jochen Rindt died for a real cause, instead of a sport which distracts the masses from revolution, then tears of pride would have been visible in his widow’s eyes, and Jackie Stewart would have been saluting instead of touching her waist.
Posted by dsmith_michigan on 2006 04 10 at 10:20 PM • permalinkDear Miranda,
If you have nothing to contribute other than pointless unfathomable bitterness towards a poignant incident captured on film, just fuck off and crawl back down your spider-hole, you retarded assbag.
Thank you,
The Human Population of Planet Earth
Posted by Crispytoast on 2006 04 10 at 10:41 PM • permalinkMark Donahue , who died as a result of an accident in a F! practice, said something about not grieving for him if he died on a race track, as he was doing what he wannted to do (racing), something he was good at, and something that he’d rather do than anything else. Only grieve for him if he, say, got hit by a school bus. He wondered how many poor bastards died at a desk, hating what they were doing. (Had the chance to talk with him at Lime rock, CT, back in the days I “worked” corners. An amazing man - and, yes, I wish that he’d liveed for many, many more years.) OldeForce
9. But, but…I thought the “left” were the nice ones. Ya know Miss M, a good troll can almost make you feel like they have a point for a second or two (until you figure out they want you to pay for their “cause”).
Your trolling, if you can even call it that, just won’t hack it at this level. Best to bugger off back to Kosworld and get some more practice.Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 04 11 at 12:39 AM • permalinkI guess as an American, where F1 is just another racing series to most people, things like this don’t really register. During my lifetime, the only major on-track death I can recall in the sport was that of Ayrton Senna in 1994 (just a bad year for sports in general, with the baseball strike that killed the World Series.) Although the story warranted only a below-the-fold spot on the sports pages here, I understand that this was a national tragedy for Brazilians, accompanied by a state funeral. The closest equivalent I can think of here would be the death of Dale Earnhardt, and even in that case I don’t think we’ll ever see the day when a NASCAR driver would receive a state funeral.
#9 Onyer Miranda,
Once the lint collection can be sorted no further, finding web items I am not interested in and leaving comments is always a rush.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 04 11 at 02:21 AM • permalinkI guess as an American, where F1 is just another racing series to most people, things like this don’t really register.
Oh, it registers with me still. Mark Donohue’s death broke my heart. And Peter Revson’s. And Bruce McLaren’s. And Swede Savage’s (a family friend killed at Indy). Sports Car, USAC/CART and F1 drivers were my heroes when I was a kid. Riverside Raceway in California was like my church. There’s only a few forlorn bits of it left now - like the ruins of a medieval monastery or a Greek amphitheater buried under a housing tract.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 04 11 at 02:44 AM • permalinkI’ve had too much experience giving people the worst possible news. It is akin to slamming someone up side of their head with a 2X4 and leaving their brain a bloody, bruised mass of jelly. Rotten business. I must say, however, that I have also been privileged to see some awesome moments of raw courage.
Isn’t it wonderful how that picture took on such significance? Fine job, Tim.
P.S. So that’s Miranda. Pffft. Why bother over moldy minds.
I actually saw an IMSA race at Riverside nearly 20 years ago (back in the days when it was mostly Nissan, Toyota and Porsche at the top of the heap.) Of course, I was just a kid at the time, so mostly I remember it being really loud. Up here in Washington, professional racing is hard to come by, mostly due to lack of appropriate facilities (pretty much all we get are the Portland and Vancouver Champ Car races and a NHRA stop.) Mostly we have to make do with the Saturday Night races at the local track out in the sticks (although those are fun, especially the demo derby nights when they have all the fun stuff like school bus figure 8s and rollover contests.) I have a list of races I’d really like to see at some point (a NASCAR short track race under the lights, either the Daytona or Sebring endurance races, an F1 race that I don’t have to give Tony George money to watch…) but there’s not much opportunity to do it here.
#21 - Spiny Norman (you 6ft. hedgehog, you!)
Bruce McLaren, along with Denny Hulme, were my heroes in the Can-Am series. I was devastated (during my last year of high school) when I heard that Bruce had been killed in a testing accident. How pointless. At least when Denny died, it was doing what he loved, from natural causes. It was so weird to see that M3 driving off Conrod straight for no reason, and then find that Denny had died of a heart attack on the fastest racetrack in Australia.The racing death that shocked me most has to be Greg Moore at Fontana in 1999. I had only started getting into racing just after Senna’s death—and being very young at the time I would have been at an age where his brilliance may not have registered as much.
Though I watched the delayed broadcast when it first aired without so much as a clue that his death had been reported in the news all afternoon. It was such a sickeningly horrifying crash.
Of course, then there was Paul Dana in the IRL only a couple of weeks ago—another awful crash; but unfortunately, that’s open-wheel speedway racing.
Speaking of NASCAR, I was there in 1973 when Mark Donohue won the Riverside Winston Cup race in an AMC Matador, of all things… by a full lap over the rest of the field! He remains the last non-series-regular to win a Cup race.
I was also there on the back straight later that year when he reached 300 mph in the Sunoco Porsche 917/30. Gawd, I had never seen anything so fast in my life.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 04 11 at 09:52 PM • permalinkkae,
NASCAR = round and round, faster and faster - if someone loses it near or in front of you, you’re stuffed. crazy people.
That’s what happened to Marcos Ambrose at Martinsville Speedway 2 weeks ago. A real tough place to drive your first NASCAR race.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 04 11 at 09:57 PM • permalinkDoes anyone remember the 1966 film ‘Grand Prix’? It included real-life drivers along with the actors, and it’s a sobering thought that, within a decade, so many of them would be dead - Jim Clark (1968), Bruce McLaren and Jochen Rindt (1970), Peter Revson (1974), and Graham Hill killed while piloting a plane in 1975.
Posted by David Morgan on 2006 04 11 at 11:12 PM • permalinkDoes anyone remember the 1966 film ‘Grand Prix’?
Hell yeah! Even 40 years later, the racing scenes are still impressive.
While Steve McQueen was originally supposed to play the lead role, James Garner, his last-minute replacement, did a fine job, and even proved to be a more than competent driver.
it’s a sobering thought that, within a decade, so many of them would be dead
I was thinking the same thing a couple of years ago when I watched it on the cable TV Speed Channel. They had a special screening with a “Making of…” documentary that was thoroughly facinating.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 04 11 at 11:34 PM • permalink
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Tragic incidents such as this, and there were far too many in the 1970s, are why Stewart retired at the pinancle of his career (after the death of his Tyrrell teammate François Cévert, IIRC). Those days were the deadliest era in F1 history, when speed and power greatly outstripped safety standards.