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Marko remembers adventures with Jochen Rindt: "He brought the best girls"
- GPblog.com
Austria has produced a lot of racing heroes for a small country. Of course you're talking about Niki Lauda, but his predecessor Jochen Rindt was at least as famous. Dr. Helmut Marko knew him well and spent a lot of time with the only posthumous world champion in the early 60s.
Rindt became world champion in 1970, but unfortunately could not celebrate this because he was killed in a fatal accident during training for the Italian Grand Prix. But if he could have celebrated it, it would certainly have been a nice party, as Marko remembers.
The advisor of Red Bull grew up together with Rindt in Graz. As teenagers they were best friends, long before Rindt would become one of the absolute stars of Formula 1 and that friendship was based on two interests: Mopeds and girls.
On an adventure with Marko and Rindt
"When someone's parents were away for the weekend, a party was immediately organized in their house or flat. And Jochen was the perfect man for that, because he always brought the cutest girls with him," Marko tells The Red Bulletin.
The duo never stuck to 'rules' like that, with Rindt often being the most adventurous of the couple. In those years they didn't do motorsport at all. That love only arose when Rindt broke his leg while skiing and his grandfather arranged a VW Beetle with driver for him. "That took two or three days," says Marko laughing. "After that we didn't need a driver anymore."
That car was then really driven on the limit, on public roads. One day they decided to visit the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring with it. "We slept in fields next to the car," remembers Marko. "The hellish noise of cars passing by woke us up. And then all of a sudden Jochen said, "I want that too!" It seemed like an unattainable dream, but the rest is history.