Born in Mainz, Germany, to an Austrian mother and German father, Rindt was orphaned at fifteen months when his parents were killed in a bombing raid in Hamburg during the Second World War. He was raised by his grandparents in Graz, Austria, and though his grandfather retained his German citizenship, Rindt competed his entire career under an Austrian racing licence.
Rindt's introduction to motorsport came at a 1961 race at the Flugplatzrennen airfield circuit, where he drove his grandmother's Simca Montlhery. He was black-flagged for dangerous driving on his first outing. After graduating to a race-prepared Alfa Romeo GT 1300, he began winning regularly. His switch to Formula Junior in 1963, with assistance from wealthy Austrian racer Kurt Bardi-Barry, launched his single-seater career in earnest.
Rindt proved extraordinarily gifted in Formula Two, amassing 29 victories across his career. He first attracted wider attention on 18 May 1964 by winning the London Trophy at Crystal Palace, beating Graham Hill. In 1967 he dominated the Formula Two series, winning nine races, earning the nickname "King of Formula 2" from the racing press despite being ineligible for the championship due to his graded driver status.
His Formula One debut came at the 1964 Austrian Grand Prix in a borrowed Brabham before he joined Cooper for 1965. Cooper, once a leading team, was in decline and Rindt's best result was a fourth at the Nürburgring. He moved on to Brabham in 1968, where technical unreliability limited him to two third-place finishes, and then to Team Lotus for 1969.
The Lotus partnership was fraught from the start. Rindt was deeply uneasy about the team's reputation for unreliability — in a twenty-month span from 1967 to 1969, Team Lotus was involved in 31 accidents. He famously remarked upon signing: "At Lotus, I can either be world champion or die." His fears nearly proved prophetic at the 1969 Spanish Grand Prix, where the wing mountings on both his car and teammate Graham Hill's car failed at speed, causing heavy crashes.
Despite these anxieties, 1969 was the year Rindt fully announced himself. He fought Jackie Stewart throughout the season and recorded his maiden Grand Prix win at Watkins Glen. The 1970 season, driven in the revolutionary Lotus 72, was his masterpiece. He won five of the first nine races — at Monaco (after leader Jack Brabham ran out of fuel on the last corner), Zandvoort, Clermont-Ferrand, Brands Hatch, and Hockenheim — building a commanding championship lead.
On 5 September 1970, during practice for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, Rindt crashed heavily approaching the Parabolica corner. A failure of the car's right front inboard brake shaft caused the accident; the car slid into poorly installed barriers, a joint parted, and the Lotus struck a stanchion head-on. Rindt, who wore his harness without the crotch straps to enable quick exit in a fire, was fatally injured when he slid under the belts. He was pronounced dead on the way to hospital in Milan.
His closest championship rival, Jacky Ickx, was unable to accumulate sufficient points in the remaining races to overhaul Rindt's tally. On 18 November 1970, Jackie Stewart presented the championship trophy to Rindt's widow, Nina, in a ceremony near the Place de la Concorde in Paris — the first and only time a Formula One world title has been awarded posthumously.
Alongside his single-seater career, Rindt won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1965, sharing a Ferrari 250LM with American Masten Gregory for the North American Racing Team. The victory was improbable: the car ran on six of twelve cylinders for much of the race after an engine malfunction. Expecting retirement, Rindt had already changed out of his racing overalls before mechanics repaired the engine. He drove through the night advancing from eighteenth to third, and the damaged car survived to take an unexpected win. Jacky Ickx later described the pair as having driven "like maniacs."
Rindt's death and posthumous championship profoundly shaped the safety debate in Formula One. He had been a key figure in the Grand Prix Drivers' Association alongside Stewart in the campaign for circuit improvements, including the push to move the 1970 German Grand Prix from the Nürburgring to Hockenheim over safety concerns.
His popularity transformed motorsport in Austria. He organised Austria's first racing car exhibition in Vienna in 1965, which evolved into the Essen Motor Show, and hosted a monthly television programme called Motorama. Two new circuits were built in Austria during his era of success — the Österreichring (now the Red Bull Ring, where one corner is named after him) and the Salzburgring. His friend Bernie Ecclestone, who had handled his professional contracts, later became the commercial rights holder for Formula One. The corner before the Red Bull Ring's final straight carries his name to this day.