IN AN age of motor racing very unlike our own, the veteran French driver Maurice Trintignant was one of his country’s national heroes, who graced both the Formula One and sportscar circuits for nearly three decades from the early 1930s onwards.
The war took six years out of his racing career, and his record could not claim to compare with that of such great competitors as Juan-Manuel Fangio. But he was a popular competitor of his era, winning many non-world drivers’ championship events, as well as two Monaco Grands Prix in the 1950s and the Le Mans 24-hour Grand Prix d’Endurance.
He was born at Saint-Cécile-les-Vignes (Vaucluse) in 1917, the youngest of five sons. His father, Fernand Trintignant, was a prosperous vineyard owner and mayor of his community. Maurice learned to drive at 9 on the family estate, and three of his brothers became racing drivers of varying ability.
Maurice Trintignant took part in his early races as a riding mechanic with his brothers René and Louis, but tragedy struck in 1933 when Louis was killed in race trials at Péronne, in Picardy. Although deeply shocked, Maurice later bought his brother’s old car and made his own racing debut with it at the 1938 Pau Grand Prix. Before the war clouds rolled across Europe, Trint, as he liked to be called, won the Grand Prix des Frontières at Chimay.
It was six years before he was able to race again, his first postwar outing being at the Coupe de la Libération in the Bois de Boulogne, in Paris. His car, a 2.3-litre Bugatti, had been hidden on a farmyard throughout the German occupation, and generations of rats had made their home in its empty fuel tank. This caused Trintignant’s friend Jean-Pierre Wimille to nickname him “Petoulet” (rat-droppings) on the spot, a sobriquet by which his fans thereafter always remembered him.
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In the immediate postwar period, Trintignant drove his Bugatti, an Amilcar and a big Delage, before joining, in 1947, the Simca team run by the brilliant designer Amédée Gordini.
After winning at Perpignan and Montlhéry, he had a serious accident in the 1948 Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten, Berne, a meeting at which two drivers were killed. Trintignant spun his car and was flung out of it on to the track, but the pursuing cars made heroic efforts to avoid his unconscious body. For the next eight days, Trintignant lay in a coma. Indeed, on the operating table the surgeons actually pronounced him dead when his heart stopped. However, within 15 days he was on his way to recovery.
The accident left him highly superstitious. Whenever he raced thereafter he slipped a handful of amulets into his overall pockets. He also invariably wore a St Christopher medallion and one from the Automobile Club de Marseilles, given to him by an unknown admirer before the start of a race.
Apart from a period in 1952 when he joined the late Louis Rosier in an independent Ferrari team, Trintignant drove the little blue Simcas until the end of 1953. For the next ten years his dapper, moustached figure was seen behind the wheel of many works team cars: Aston Martin, BRM, Cooper, Ferrari, Porsche and Maserati, and he scored an impressive number of victories both in single-seater and sports cars. These included the Monaco Grand Prix in 1955 and 1958, as well as non-world championship events at Angoulème, Albi, Cadours, Chimay, Geneva, Buenos Aires, Caen, Hyères, Rouen, Rheims, the Messina ten hours, the Pau GP (three times) and in 1954 the Le Mans 24-hour sportscar race, with Froilan Gonzalez, in a 4.9-litre Ferrari.
Each year, Trintignant promised his wife that it would be his last season, but he invariably went back on his word as he loved the sport so much. From 1963 onwards, however, he did not have a regular Formula One drive and gradually retired from the scene.
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A charming, amiable individual, Trintignant lived in retirement from the track at Vergèze (Gard), and was for some years mayor of the community.
His vineyards were famous for producing red and rosé wines, his speciality being a wine named Le Petoulet. Each bottle carried a racing car motif and black-and-white chequered flag on its label, and his company’s delivery vans bore the slogan, “Le champion des vins — Le vin du champion”.
Maurice Trintignant, racing driver, was born on October 30, 1917. He died on February 12, 2005, aged 87.