The Last Corner That Broke Jack Brabham's Heart

For almost the entire distance of the 1970 Monaco Grand Prix, Jack Brabham was going to win. The Australian, three times World Champion and founder of his own car-building enterprise, had driven a controlled, measured race through the streets of the principality. Jochen Rindt, his closest pursuer in the Lotus 72, had been unable to close the gap. With one lap remaining, the victory seemed certain.

Brabham was on his final lap. He came through Casino Square, down through Mirabeau, around the Loews hairpin and onto the seafront. He had done this eighty times already that afternoon. One more time and the race was his. Into the final corner — the right-hander before the pit straight, the old Gasworks hairpin — Brabham arrived a fraction wide. His Brabham BT33 ran onto the painted road surface at the apex, the tyres lost adhesion, and the car pushed wide into the barriers.

Jochen Rindt, who had been right behind and had seen none of this coming, was suddenly through and into the lead. He crossed the finish line to win. Brabham, his car still running, was classified second. He had been perhaps ten metres from victory when it was taken from him by a fraction of a degree of steering.

The images of Brabham climbing from his car, helmet in hand, the understanding of what had just happened crossing his face, are among the most poignant in the sport's history. He was 44 years old. He would retire from driving at the end of the season. Monaco 1970 was as close as he got to his fourth victory at the circuit.

Jochen Rindt won for Lotus, the victory arriving in the most dramatic fashion imaginable. Jack Brabham was classified second, his error on the final corner denying him what would have been a deserved victory. Henri Pescarolo was classified third.

Rindt's win extended his championship lead as part of a dominant mid-season run. He was, by the summer of 1970, producing the drives of his life — commanding, fast, at times breathtaking. The Lotus 72 was the class of the field in his hands.

Jochen Rindt would win the 1970 World Championship — the only posthumous title in the sport's history. In qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in September, his Lotus 72 suffered a brake shaft failure under heavy braking for the Parabolica and the car underran the barriers. Rindt died of his injuries. By that point, his points lead was large enough that no remaining driver could mathematically overhaul him. He was champion.

The 1970 season, with Rindt's death following so shortly after the dominance of Monaco and the mid-season, carries a particular melancholy. His driving that year — including the Monaco victory, seized from Brabham's misfortune — was some of the finest of his career. The Austrian was 28 years old when he died.

May 1970 was a month of crisis in the United States. Four days before the Monaco Grand Prix, National Guard troops shot and killed four student protesters at Kent State University in Ohio during demonstrations against the Vietnam War. The images — a young woman kneeling over a body on a university campus — became defining photographs of an era. The protest movement that followed temporarily shut down hundreds of American universities.

In Europe, the sense of late-1960s turbulence had not abated. The post-1968 political landscape remained unsettled. Monaco itself — a principality of extraordinary wealth floating in the Mediterranean, hosting the most glamorous race in the world — was a place entirely apart from the politics of the surrounding continent. For one weekend in May, the streets belonged to the racing cars and to the crowds that crammed every available viewpoint from the harbour to the hillside.

Warm and dry, with the bright sunshine that Monte Carlo in May reliably provides. Temperatures around 22°C, the circuit dry and fast throughout. The conditions were benign and favoured the driver in front — which, for most of the race, was Brabham. The dry track meant the final-corner error was entirely of Brabham's making, not a product of any external condition.