Tears coursed down his cheeks as the Austrian national anthem was played

When the talk is of Jochen Rindt, most people instinctively remember Monaco in 1970. Jochen was peeved at Monte Carlo that year, the new Lotus 72, for which there had been so much optimism, wasn't working, so out came the old 49. There seemed little realistic hope for success, and Rindt qualified the car only eighth, his time of 1:25.9 alomost two seconds away from Jackie Stewart's pole lap. He wasn't much interested, in truth, and drove in the same fashion for the first half of the race, picking up places only when such as Stewart, Ickx and Beltoise retired. By 40 laps, halfdistance, he was fourth, 15 seconds behind Jack Brabham, the leader. The he passed Denny Hulme for third, and suddenly his lap times came alive.

It was an incredibly fast race, one way and another, with Brabham lapping consistently under his qualifying time, Amon a couple of seconds behind in the March, and Jochen 12 seconds behind Chris.

Twenty laps left, and Amon retired with broken suspension, so that now Rindt had that vital whiff of the leader's scent. 14 seconds to make up, and Jochen began to whittle it away, albeit not by enough to catch Brabham. All he could do was maintain the pressure, hope that Jack might be flustered into a mistake. With four laps left, though, the gap was still 9 seconds. Hopeless, apparently.

Or maybe not. On lap 77 Brabham was disastrously held up by an ailing Siffert, so that as he crossed the line, with three laps to the flag, he led Rindt by 4.4 seconds. On the next lap, agitated still, he lost another couple. Two laps 2.4 seconds.

Jack collected himself now, so that his 79th lap was his fastest of the race, but still Jochen gained over a second! One lap 1.3 seconds.

In the end Brabham blew it at the last corner. All round the final lap Rindt was gaining, but on the approach to the Gasworks Hairpin was not quite in range. Brabham, though, was unnerved by now, and decided he had to lap Piers Courage's de Tomaso before the corner. I so doing, he got on the marbles, locked up, slid straight on into the guardrail.

There were gasps at that, but there it was. On his last lap, Jochen had done 1:23.2 and what we didn't know at the time was that the one before had been 1:23.3 and this after going on two hours around Monaco. He had qualified, remember, 1:25.9.

Even dry statistic come alive when they are such as these, but they cannot hint at what Rindt was doing with that Lotus in the closing stages. You could believe, watching him, that Jochen was in some kind of trance.

And afterwards, too, Up in the Royal Box, with the Rainiers, tears coursed down his cheeks as the Austrian national anthem was played. It was a spontaneous release of emotion, a man who had come suddenly back to earth, begun to understand the enormity of what he had done.