Stirling Moss

Known simply as “Mr Motor Racing”, Sir Stirling Moss was the greatest all-round driver that the sport has ever seen and the best grand prix driver never to win the world championship.

Trophies are no way to measure the success of Moss, however. He raced fair and hard and wouldn’t have it any other way, even though the result was a lack of silverware in years where he dominated the opposition, following the four years in which he had the misfortune (or privilege) to race at the same time as Juan Manuel Fangio.

The first home winner of the British Grand Prix and the first — along with Tony Brooks — to win in a British car, Moss spearheaded Britain’s rise in international racing. But it was with Mercedes — and Motor Sport’s Continental correspondent Denis Jenkinson — that he famously won the 1955 Mille Miglia.

His career also spanned generations: Moss raced against Rudolf Caracciola in the 1952 Mille Miglia and was Martin Brundle’s team-mate in an ill-fated return in the British Touring Car Championship in 1980. He continued to race into his eighties in historic events; his name instantly recognisable to motor racing fans of any age.

Upbringing and early career

Stirling’s father Alfred Moss finished 16th in 1924 Indianapolis 500 while in America studying to become a dentist. Born in West London five years later, Stirling Moss lived in the city throughout his life despite tax advantages elsewhere.

He first competed with a BMW 328 in trials and rallies during 1947 and it was the following year and with a 500cc Formula 3 Cooper MkII-JAP that he began winning races. He turned professional in 1950 with HWM but broke his knee at Naples. Back racing just two weeks later, he gained national fame by winning that year’s Tourist Trophy at Dundrod with Tommy Wisdom’s Jaguar XK120.

Grand Prix debut for HWM

Moss drove anything from single-seaters to rally cars and proved remarkably adaptable to all sorts of machinery. Success continued with his 500cc Cooper MkV-Norton in 1951 and Moss finished eighth on his world championship debut in that year’s Swiss GP after his HWM-Alta ran out of fuel on the line. He was third in the non-championship Dutch GP and returned to Dundrod to win the TT again, now driving a works Jaguar C-type.

He tested the overly complicated BRM during the winter but it was not ready to race. Organisers hastily switched the 1952 World Championship to Formula 2 rules and Moss made five frustrating GP starts for HWM, ERA and Connaught – retiring on each occasion.

He was second in the 1952 Monte Carlo Rally in a Sunbeam-Talbot 90, won his class in that year’s Alpine Rally, and drove a Humber Super Snipe through 15 European countries in four days for a publicity stunt.

Sixth for Cooper in the 1953 German GP, Moss finished second in that year’s Le Mans 24 Hours with a works Jaguar C-type and Peter Walker. A generally disappointing year in single-seaters was ended by a broken shoulder after a crash during a Formule Libre race at Castle Combe.

Formula 1 breakthrough with Maserati and Mercedes-Benz

The 1954 season proved to be his breakthrough one for Moss. He won the Sebring 12 Hours in Briggs Cunningham’s OSCA MT4 and, disappointed not to be included in the new Mercedes-Benz team, bought a Maserati 250F for the world championship’s return to F1 rules. He immediately finished third in the Belgian GP to score his first championship points. A works driver for the Italians by the end of the campaign, he did not finish another race. However, he impressed during qualifying and led the Italian GP until he retired within sight of victory.

Alfred Neubauer was impressed and Moss joined Mercedes-Benz for 1955 as Juan Manuel Fangio’s team-mate in both F1 and sports cars. They became known as “The Train” as they ran nose-to-tail in successive GPs, the Argentinian inches ahead and world champion once more.

Moss was happy to play understudy to a man he described as “the greatest of them all” and 20 years his senior, but in one of grand prix racing’s enduring mysteries, beat Fangio to the finish line in the British GP at Aintree. They finished line astern as Mercedes swept the top four positions. To his dying day, Moss affirmed that he didn’t know whether Fangio had gifted him the home win, his first in the world championship.

“Perhaps it was suggested to Fangio that he should let me win, because it was the British Grand Prix,” said Moss. “It’s quite possible. But he wasn’t the kind of guy who would ever have let me know it, unlike some drivers of the recent past. He had too much class for that.”

Moss could afford to be untroubled about the precise nature of his Aintree victory, as 1955 brought ample evidence as to the extent of his prodigious talent, not least in sports cars, where he won the 1955 Tourist Trophy at Dundrod and the Targa Florio, in both cases at the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz 300SLR.

But these wins pale in comparison to his triumph in May, the peak of his career, when he won the Mille Miglia, again in a 300 SLR, while navigated by Motor Sport‘s Denis Jenkinson. Meticulous preparation and a formidable partnership between Moss and Jenks delivered a sensational result, not to mention first-hand race report, and their average speed of 99mph is a record that will stand forever.

However, the Mercedes machine would come to a halt at the end of the season, as the manufacturer withdrew from motor sport in the wake of the tragic disaster at the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hours.

Perennial championship runner-up

Runner-up behind Fangio in the 1955 F1 World Championship, Moss repeated that result for the next two years when racing as Maserati’s team leader. He also finished second at Le Mans again in 1956 in the works Aston Martin DB3S he shared with Peter Collins.

Moss had always wanted to race for a competitive British F1 team and he joined Vanwall in 1957. He won the British GP after taking over from the ill Tony Brooks and added two further victories to finish second in the World Championship once more. Fangio, his hero and nemesis, entered semi-retirement at the end of the year and it was Moss that looked to surely benefit with a long overdue and deserved world title.

Contracted to Vanwall once more in 1958, he won the opening GP in Argentina with Rob Walker’s Cooper T43-Climax in the team’s absence. He won another three rounds for Vanwall but reliability hindered Moss’s cause and Ferrari’s Mike Hawthorn entered into contention, despite only claiming one victory over the course of the season.

Then came the Portuguese Grand Prix and a supreme act of sportsmanship by Moss that would ultimately cost him the title. After sliding off the track and running down an escape road, Hawthorn was pushed back onto the circuit and finished second, only to be stripped of the place for receiving assistance.

Enter Moss. ““Mike did nothing wrong,” he said in 2009. “He got stuck in an escape road and received a push when he wasn’t actually on the circuit. I didn’t see how that warranted exclusion.” Moss argued Hawthorn’s case with the stewards and the Ferrari driver was reinstated, adding six points to his tally.

Two races later in Morocco, another second place won Hawthorn the title by a single point.

Upsetting the odds with Rob Walker

Vanwall withdrew from racing before the new season and Moss rebuffed advances from Ferrari (not for the first time) to race for Rob Walker’s private team from 1959. Gearbox reliability thwarted his championship hopes that year although he was part of a three-way title decider in the United States GP. His Cooper T51-Climax failed once more and Moss was third in the final standings.

Walker bought a Lotus 18-Climax for the 1960 Monaco GP and Moss scored that marque’s first GP victory. But he was seriously injured when his left rear wheel fell off at approximately 140mph while practising for the Belgian GP. With fractures to legs and back, Moss returned before the end of the year and won the United States GP – his second race back. Despite being absent from three races (and part of the British boycott of that year’s Italian GP), Moss was third in the world championship once more.

New rules were introduced for 1961 and Ferrari was expected to dominate. That year’s Monaco GP was perhaps Moss’s finest victory as his old Lotus held off the faster Ferraris lap-after-lap. He scored his 16th and final F1 championship victory in the German GP after his car had been updated with Lotus 21 bodywork.

For the third year in a row, Moss was third in the championship having finished in the top-three for seven years running despite injury and cars that were frequently below par in both speed and reliability. No one has done more in a GP car without winning the title.

The season also brought a seventh Tourist Trophy victory as he fended off the Aston Martins to win in the same Ferrari 250 GT SWB that had delivered him victory the year before.

The Goodwood accident and subsequent life

He continued with his varied racing programme at the start of 1962, during which he was planning to drive for Ferrari, with factory-supported Formula 1 cars run by Rob Walker.

Those plans never came to fruition, however, when he crashed a British Racing Partnership Lotus 18-Climax at Goodwood’s St Mary’s corner during the Glover Trophy while seeking the fastest lap despite being out of contention for victory.

Britain’s most famous driver was severely injured and the cause was never fully explained. It was a year before he was fully recovered from the head injuries he had sustained and returned to the track once more — back at an empty Goodwood.

“My times were quite reasonable, I was on the pace,” he said. “But I found that I had to do everything in the car consciously. I’d approach a corner and think, ‘I’ve got to get over to the edge of the road here, I’d better brake now, this is where I should get back on the power.’ It all had to be worked out, nothing was automatic any more.

“I no longer had the capability I’d had before. That was it. It was a depressing decision to have to take, but it was a very easy decision, because it was obvious to me that I wasn’t what I had been. If I couldn’t come back at the top, there was no point. I didn’t want to come back as second-best, my pride wouldn’t let me. That same evening, back in London, I announced my retirement.”

Later Moss would tell of his regret that he had made the decision prematurely, that he may have been able to regain his previous ability given more time, but his decision had been made: “Once I’d said I was out, I was out. If people retire, and then change their minds and come back, well, I don’t like that sort of thing.”

Moss turned to property and historic racing before a surprise entry in the 1980 British Saloon Car Championship, racing an Audi 80. There were reliability issues, but Moss also struggled to adapt to front-wheel drive racing. After two seasons, the latter alongside team-mate Martin Brundle, Moss hung up his driving gloves once more.

His reputation was untarnished. Moss is one of the anomalies that prove that championship titles sometimes do not matter. Always the consummate professional, he was awarded the British Racing Drivers’ Club Gold Star on a record 10 occasions.

He remained present on the historic racing circuit until he pulled out of the 2011 Le Mans Legends race after a practice lap. He announced his retirement from competitive racing and explained that he had been going slowly and, for the first time, had been frightened at the thought of competing at race speed.

Moss retired from public life in 2018 after a long illness and his death was announced on April 12, 2020.

Knighted in 2000, Sir Stirling Moss was a world champion in all but name.