| ||||
 | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||||||||||
 |
Maurice Trintignant died last weekend at the age of 87. His name probably doesn't mean much to motor racing fans much under 50 unless they are interested in the history of the sport, where his name is a constant presence from the 1930s to the 1960s. If you are reading about Ferrari, Vanwall, Cooper, BRM, Gordini, Aston Martin or Lotus, there he is, because he drove for all of them in a long and remarkable career. The length of his career alone, in an era where driver fatalities were common, would have marked him out; but he also had considerable success, winning two GPs and the Le Mans 24 hour race as well as a host of smaller events. He made his driving debut in the 1938 Pau Grand Prix, a race he was to win for the third time some 24 years later! He had a serious accident in the 1948 Swiss Grand Prix, where two drivers were killed. Trintignant was flung out of his car after spinning it and lay on track as the pursuing pack swerved to avoid his unconscious body. He was in a coma for eight days and the surgeons at one time pronounced him dead. He recovered to take part in the first World Championship in 1950 driving for Gordini, and competed every year until 1964 when he took a fine fifth place in the German GP, driving his own BRM in his penultimate race. In his 84th and final race, the Italian GP, he set the record for most GPs contested. He joined Ferrari in 1954, his first Grand Prix victory came in 1955 at Monaco at the wheel of a Ferrari 625. The F2 based car came home a surprise winner when the quicker opposition from Mercedes and Maserati dropped out. He left Ferrari at the end of the year, rejoining for four races in 1957. In 1958 he started a long and happy association with Rob Walker. This tiny, private team raced Coopers derived from F2 cars fitted with 2.2 or 2.0 litre engines - the modern equivalent would be an F3 team bolting an F3000 engine into their Dallara and going Grand Prix racing. Stirling Moss had sensationally won the first GP of the year for them in Argentina, this was dismissed as a fluke, but then at Monaco, Trintignant won their second GP victory in a row there after a race of attrition. The qualities of level-headedness and mechanical sympathy which kept him safe in his long career, and helped him to his two GP wins, also meant that he was an extremely successful sports car driver, his biggest win being the 1954 Le Mans 24-hour race with Froilan Gonzalez in a Ferrari 375. He continued to race the Scuderia's sports cars successfully, in 1956 winning the Agadir and Dakar GPs in an 857 Monza Spyder and the Swedish GP in a 290MM shared with Phil Hill. After his retirement from motor racing Trintignant lived at Vergèze, and was for some years mayor of the community. He owned vineyards famous for producing red and rosé wines, his specialty being a wine named Le Petoulet. If you don’t know why, you'll have to look it up... Click here to return to the Ferrari Happenings page.
|
