Trintignant began racing in 1938 and won the 1939 Grand Prix des Frontières. His career was interrupted by the Second World War, during which his own Bugatti was stored in a barn. When he rebuilt it for the 1945 Coupé de la Liberation, a clogged fuel filter — filled with rat droppings — caused him to retire from the race. The incident earned him the nickname "Le Petoulet" from fellow racer Jean-Pierre Wimille.
In 1948, Trintignant suffered a very serious accident during a support race for the Swiss Grand Prix. He was thrown into the air and landed in the middle of the track. His heart stopped beating for one minute and fifteen seconds, and he was pronounced dead at the hospital; however, he survived and woke after a week-long coma. For six months he suffered from amnesia and a loss of motor skills before making a near complete recovery. The corner at which he crashed was later named after him. During his recovery his wife gave him a stuffed teddy bear, which he kept in his pocket while racing for the rest of his career as a superstition. He returned to racing in 1949 and won a Formula Two race at the Circuit des Remparts.
By 1950, Trintignant's reputation was sufficient for him to be offered a works drive with the Gordini team in the newly formed Formula One World Championship. He competed in Formula One every year until his retirement after the 1964 season. His best championship years were 1954 and 1955, when he finished fourth in the Drivers' Championship on both occasions.
His two Monaco Grand Prix victories in 1955 and 1958 were notable for having been achieved from relatively far down the grid, starting from ninth and fifth respectively. In 1954, Trintignant and José Froilán González won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a Ferrari 375 Plus, despite a seven-minute pitstop with an hour and a half remaining caused by faulty ignition wiring in torrential rain.
At the 1955 Argentine Grand Prix, Trintignant unusually shared both second and third places, a product of Scuderia Ferrari's policy of passing cars to their top drivers when an original car broke down. In 1956 he drove the Bugatti Type 251 in the French Grand Prix, becoming the last driver to represent the marque at a Grand Prix race. Even in his final season, driving his own BRM P57, he scored points, finishing fifth at the 1964 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. Between 1959 and 1966, Trintignant held the record for the most World Championship Grand Prix starts.
In 2000, Trintignant competed in the Historic Grand Prix of Monaco, reunited with the Cooper T45 he had driven to victory there in 1958.
After retiring from motor racing, Trintignant returned to winemaking, taking over his father's vineyard near the town of Vergèze in the Languedoc-Roussillon wine-growing region, where he named his vintage Le Petoulet. He was awarded the Légion d'Honneur in 1960 and served as mayor of Vergèze between 1958 and 1964. His nephew, Jean-Louis, was a highly successful actor in post-World War II France. Trintignant died aged 87 in 2005.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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