My hero

By Sir Stirling Moss

“I did have a motorsport hero when I was a kid — Prince Bira — but only because I had read his books. I suppose hero is not quite the right word; I thought he’d had a great life and that he’d gone about his racing very nicely — dapper and stylish. I raced against him after the war and he was still very stylish; I liked his competitive privateer approach. The problem I had with heroes was the war: it started when I was nine or 10, which is when you pick heroes and, by the time it finished, I wanted to go racing myself. I have more heroes now than I had then. For actual out-and-out driving Fangio, in my mind, is the greatest of all time, although I think Senna was of a similar ability.”