Yahoo Autos Did Jean Girard Of Talladega Nights Race In The 2005 U.S. Grand Prix? Jalopnik Investigates
Lemme just quote the late, great Colonel Sanders. He said, “I’m too drunk to taste this chicken.”
On this day in 2006, one of motorsport’s finest movies hit the big screen. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby tells the story of a NASCAR driver fighting to save a career threatened by a French Formula 1 driver named Jean Girard. I recently introduced this classic of American cinema to some friends overseas, but my re-watching of it left me with one pressing question: Within the confines of the Talladega Nights universe, would Jean Girard have entered the infamous 2005 United States Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway?
Allow me to establish some context, for anyone unfamiliar with what I’m investigating. A mere six cars took the start of the 2005 U.S. Grand Prix owing to the failure of Michelin’s tires; basically, the road course used a little bit of IMS’s oval banking, and the Michelin tires couldn’t handle the strain. At that point in time, mid-race tire changes were banned, and there was no way a Michelin-shod team would have been able to safely complete a full race distance. So, the six cars that took the start of the race came from three teams associated with Bridgestone, whose tires actually managed to withstand the demands of the track. Those teams were Ferrari, Jordan, and Minardi.
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Jean Girard’s introduction to the film is iconic for countless reasons, but on my most recent rewatch, I was focusing less on him breaking Ricky Bobby’s arm than I was on the clips of Girard’s supposed F1 career.
The footage is obviously some early 2000s F1 action between a Minardi and a Renault, but to be absolutely positive I was working from the most informed place possible, I turned to my good friend Sean Kelly, who you may know as @virtualstatman on social media, to more precisely decipher the clip. He told me, “The footage in that clip is from the 2004 European GP at the Nurburgring. It appears to be Gianmaria Bruni’s Minardi leading Jarno Trulli’s Renault.”
It’s not fully clear which car Girard is supposed to be driving, and Talladega Nights offers no additional context, but neither driver was terribly impressive in 2004. Trulli scored one win to finish sixth overall in the 2004 Formula 1 World Drivers Championship. Bruni competed in every single event, failed to score a single point, and was classified as 25th overall — ranked behind five drivers who only contested a partial season.
The matter of Girard’s team is critical — but perhaps not as critical as the timeline. Is Talladega Nights set in 2005, implying that the film would be released the subsequent year, in 2006? Or is the movie set in 2006? I needed to consult the archives to find out.
