Achiever
The best racing driver of his day

STIRLING MOSS went down in motor racing history as the driver who never won the world championship. But among the other drivers, Moss had the reputation of being the best of his time.

He had 500 races in 15 years and his percentage of victories — 43 per cent — was higher than even Juan Fangio’s. And Fangio, five-time champion, was the king of post-war motor-racing.

Fangio once said "Moss was the best in my time".

Moss’s career came to an end on Easter Monday, 1962, during a race at Goodwood, Sussex. He was driving a Lotus and was in fourth place on the ninth lap when the gear-box stuck in fourth.

A racing car can be driven without brakes, but not without the gearbox. He had to come in for repairs.

His mechanics fixed the trouble in five minutes. But when Moss re-entered the race, he was three laps, or 7.2 miles, behind Graham Hill in first place.

Moss, then 33, stood out from his contemporaries because he was capable of driving to the limit. And that what he did on this occasion. He put his foot right down, broke the course record and made up a full lap on Hill.

He approached Hill out of a fast bend. His speed was around 120 mph. Hill said on television later that he was amazed to see Moss still coming on when he should have been slowing to take the bend.

Brain damage

Moss’s Lotus went straight on ... into an earth bank. The crowd gasped. It was the eighth time in his career that Moss had crashed. But this was the last time.

Mechanics took 40 minutes to cut him from the tangled mess of metal. The side of his face was slashed to the bone, his left cheekbone crushed, an eye-socket displaced, his left arm broken and his brain was so severely damaged that his left side was paralysed.

He was kept in hospital for months and operated on several times. The damage to his brain was such that he had verbally to tell himself to do things before his body was able to function properly.

A year later, Moss felt he was fit enough to go back to Goodwood and have a try-out. He drove for 45 minutes, reaching a top speed of 145 mph.

"It’s pretty shattering thing to admit," he said afterwards. "But what’s the point of kidding yourself? I think it would be dangerous — endangering others and certainly myself — to continue. My reactions are down a little. It’s not the same."

So Moss went into business, drove in a few rallies, carried on his fast life of travel, good food and women... but never competed in Grand Prix again.

Drove at six

Stirling Moss was born on September 7, 1929. His father, Alfred Moss, a London dentist, had done some motor-racing. His mother, Aileen, had also driven cars. In 1936 she was the England women’s champion.

Stirling was often ill as a child and a case of nephritis later kept him out of the RAF. He was no whizz-kid at school, and when he left he was faced with a choice between farming and hotel administration as a career.

Neither idea interested him. He was absorbed in cars.

He could drive at the age of six and owned an old Austin 7 by the time he was 10. He drove around the family’s farm near Tring in Hertfordshire.

When he was 15, he saved enough money to buy a three-wheel Morgan. His father wouldn’t buy it for him, because he didn’t want Stirling to be a racing driver.

Moss said "My parents taught me that everything in life is attainable if you’re prepared to sacrifice to get it."

Like his famous sister, Pat, he had won money show-jumping. He used the money to buy another car.

When he was 18, his father helped him to buy his first racing car, a Cooper. The first time he raced it, at Prescott, he broke a course record. In his first year on the track, he entered 15 events and won 11 of them.

He was invited to race in Italy and, again, did well. Tazio Nuvolari, one of the leading drivers there, said: "Watch him. He will be one of the great ones".

Too patriotic

By the early ‘Fifties he was competing against the world’s major drivers and winning.

Ferrari made him an offer but he was so patriotic that he preferred British-made cars which weren’t, at that time, so fast or so reliable.

That was the chief reason why he never won the world championship. Other drivers like Mike Hawthorn, Graham Hill and Fangio competed in better machines.

He was incredibly cool. Minutes before the start of major events he could be seen chatting or signing autographs.

Once he was talking to another driver just as a big race was about to begin. Assuming they had been discussing race strategy, a friend asked him afterwards: ‘What were you talking about?’

"Crumpet, of course," replied Moss. "What else?"

Moss became a world figure, dining with Prime Ministers and appearing regularly on television. He was the most quoted, most read, sportsman of his time. And one of the richest.

But the money never worried him. "I race because I want to do it and because I want to win," he once said.

One by one, his friends were killed — Hawthorn, Piers Courage, Jim Clark.

He nearly died himself.

Today, Moss still leads a fast life. Occasionally he gets in the news for committing traffic offences.

He’s still a pretty fast driver?

(First Features)