Maurice Trintignant

Interesting facts

His distinctive nickname, "Le Pétoulet" (roughly "the rat-dropping man"), came from a post-war 1945 race: a clogged fuel filter in his rebuilt Bugatti caused him to drop out, and the filter turned out to be blocked by rat droppings - rival Jean-Pierre Wimille coined the nickname, and it stuck with him for the rest of his career. A severe 1948 crash stopped his heart for over a minute and left him in a coma with amnesia; after recovering, his wife gave him a stuffed teddy bear that he carried as a talisman in every race afterward. Both of his Formula 1 wins, in 1955 and 1958, came at Monaco, and both times he came from well down the grid, starting 9th and 5th respectively. After retiring, he became a winemaker near Vergèze and named his vintage "Le Pétoulet," after his famous nickname. Maurice Trintignant raced in Formula 1 from 1950 to 1964, across 15 seasons as a French driver. He scored a total of 71 championship points over his career.