Driving to work

Maurice Trintignant is driving his Scuderia Centro-Sud Cooper- Climax to work in 1960 (picture above). In this case, work being the Formula One United Stated Grand Prix at Riverside in Los Angeles! The French driver is easily recognisable by his trademark bobble-hat, “which proves that Frenchmen are actually perfectly capable of dressing badly as everyone else!” (see picture below).

Trintignant started his career back in 1938, when he repaired the Type 51 Bugatti that had killed his brother Louis, five years earlier, which must have really worried his Mum… And within just twelve months, he’d won his first Grand Prix at Chimay in Belgium.

After WW2, he took part in Europe’s very first post-war race meeting, held in the Bois de Boulogne in 1945, but his old Bugatti retired with fuel problems. The fault was subsequently traced to a rat’s nest in the fuel tank! This led to him acquiring the perpetual nickname of “Pétoulet”. Which means… Rat-shit!

Twice in the fifties, Trintignant won the Monaco Grand Prix, becoming France’s first World Championship race winner in the process, and took part in his final Grand Prix at the Nürburgring in 1964, where he drove his self-entered BRM to a points-scoring 5th place.

Special thanks to William Ross for this very interesting post.