14/04/2020
NEWS STORY
Sir Stirling Crauford Moss, OBE, has died aged 90, was the most significant driver in the history of our sport.
He set more landmarks than any other and it wasn't just things of statistical significance, like the number of fastest laps. Take his win in the 1958 Argentine GP, than which there has never been a greater drive in the history of motor racing.
He was driving Rob Walker's year-old F2 Cooper fitted with a 2-litre Coventry Climax FPF engine, 500cc down on the opposition. The Cooper's wheels were secured by four bolts, not a knock-off hub nut, so a stop for tyres would take a long time and everyone expected to stop for tyres. Stirling and Rob complained loudly about this for the benefit of their rivals.
Fangio set his, and Maserati's, last pole position with Moss seventh on the grid. Eventually, thanks to the opposition making tyre stops, the Cooper led but the main pursuers, the Ferraris of Musso and Hawthorn, were relaxed, believing that Stirling was due a lengthy stop. His pit had the spare wheels ready and made great show of being set.
Moss, however, sought to drive on the oiliest parts of the track and drove the last few laps with the canvas showing and came home 2.7 seconds ahead of Musso. It was a demonstration of gamesmanship, or the art of winning without actually cheating. It was also the first time in the history of the World Championship that a race was won by a privateer or by a rear-engined car. It was the first F1 win for both Cooper and Coventry Climax engines. Four landmarks in one afternoon.
Eighteen months later, Moss and Walker again bamboozled Ferrari who were favourites to win the Italian GP on the banked Monza track. The organisers had chosen the banked track to favour Ferrari (of course). The bankings were notorious for tyre wear and at the back, the Walker/Moss Cooper was fitted with Borrani wire wheels, with knock-off hub caps.
Of course they intended to make a pit stop, or so Ferrari believed as they let him build a lead. In fact, the Cooper's light weight meant it was easy on tyres and Moss won by 46 seconds ahead of Phil Hill's Ferrari. Ferrari was fooled again by gamesmanship; the Scuderia understood out and out cheating, just not subtlety.
It is small wonder that Enzo Ferrari rated Stirling as equal to Tazio Nuvolari as the greatest driver. I have a photo of Moss and Nuvolari together at Silverstone in 1950. I once showed it to Stirling with the comment that it was Enzo's dream team. He pointed at Nuvolari and said, 'So long as he's number two.'
Stirling never cheated, unlike Prost, Senna and Schumacher who, in my book, can never be considered to be among the greats because they did cheat. In fact he defended Mike Hawthorn who had been disqualified from second place in the 1958 Portuguese GP for push starting his car against the flow of traffic. Hawthorn was guilty as charged, and he and Moss were not great pals, but Stirling hated the idea of a colleague who had put his life on the line being robbed over a technicality.
Hawthorn was reinstated and received his six points for second place. Mike won the championship from Stirling by a single point. Not winning the championship never bothered Moss. He once told me that it gave him a distinction which winning the title once or twice would not.
In fact he won two world titles, the World Sports Car Championship for Mercedes-Benz in 1955, and for Aston Martin in 1959. He not only took all of Mercedes-Benz's wins, he became the only man to win the Mille Miglia, Targa Florio and Tourist Trophy in the same year. Many today do not appreciate how important sports car racing was in the 1950s and Stirling was acknowledged as the best throughout the decade, better than Ascari, better than Fangio.
He was the first driver to win a classic race, the Tourist Trophy, seven times. In 1961 his Rob Walker-entered Ferrari 250 GT SWB was fitted with a radio and he followed the opposition via the BBC commentary. How cool is that? Nobody today can be that cool, and nobody else back in the day thought of being that cool. It is not even clear how much of the commentary he listened to, but the word got around and it disheartened the opposition.
Every time Stirling overtook someone, he raised a hand in acknowledgement. The tail-ender being lapped loved that the maestro recognised him, but if someone had been fighting for the corner with brakes and tyres ablaze, and Stirling thanked him for allowing him through, it was a blow to the ego.
At the first Goodwood Revival Meeting, Martin Brundle was driving a 3.8-litre Jaguar D-type, Stirling was in a 3-litre Aston Martin DBR1. Afterwards Brundle said that when Moss, who was 68, overtook him, he raised his hand to thank him and then took Woodcote Corner one hand on the wheel in a perfect drift.
It was classic gamesman, like him telling everyone that he simply adored wet weather. He didn't, though there has never been a better driver in the wet. The 1961 International Trophy at Silverstone was run to the short-lived 3-litre Intercontinental Formula. Without a power or tyre advantage, Stirling lapped everyone: Jack Brabham, Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Bruce McLaren...
Stirling was the first modern professional driver, at least in Europe, yet was still of the amateur, Corinthian, tradition. His hair loss made him look older than he was. After he won the 1950 Tourist Trophy in a private Jaguar XK120, beating the works entries, he was asked to lead the Jaguar team and he agreed, verbally. He was too young to commit to paper since he did not turn 21 until the next day. No other driver had led a works team at so young an age.
He made a huge impression on the British public and his name helped. His father had over-ruled his mother's desire to call him Hamish. Hamish Moss is the name of an accountant, but Stirling was dashing. It helped that he usually had a pretty girl, 'crumpet', on his arm and could even spot them in the crowd while he was racing. He was, however, a non-smoker and he rarely drank which rather went against the popular image of a racing driver at the time.
Moss was helped when Hawthorn burst on the scene; Mike was tall and blond, usually seen with a pipe in his mouth and a pint in his hand. The press worked up a fictitious story of rivalry which helped both men and the sport in general. The truth was that they were on friendly terms without being friends. Stirling was noted for never having an 'off' day, Mike's performance could depend on the size of his hangover. Each man had his following among the public.
Apart from never having an 'off' day Moss was famed for his versatility. He not only raced, but did a few rallies as well. On his debut he was second in the 1952 Monte Carlo Rally and went on to become only the second driver to win an Alpine Gold Cup for finishing three successive Alpine Rallies without dropping a single penalty point, this at a time when few Alpine roads were metalled.
His celebrated win in the 1955 Mille Miglia shows his intelligent application to racing as well as his skill. He chose the journalist, Denis Jenkinson, as his passenger and he and Jenks devised what would become known as 'pace notes'. They were not the first, but became the most famous. Mercedes-Benz fixed them up with a wireless intercom between their helmets but when the system was tested at Hockenheim they discovered a snag. When Moss was on the limit, at ten tenths, his hearing shut down; it is a phenomenon not unknown among test pilots. Stirling's eyesight remained sharp and so he and Jenks devised a system of hand signals.
Jenks sometimes wondered how hard rally and racing drivers were really trying when they could hold conversations over the radio.
Stirling's preference for driving British cars damaged his career in the early 1950s though it is hard to see what other options he had. For 1954 he bought a Maserati 250F and was so quick that the Maserati works team gradually adopted him. He then spent a year driving in the wheel tracks of Fangio at Mercedes-Benz. It is my belief that, from 1956 on, he was at least the equal of Fangio in F1.
Moss gave a British car its first World Championship win when he took over the Vanwall of Tony Brooks to win the 1957 British GP at Aintree. It was a turning point in the history of British racing. Stirling recorded the first WC wins for Vanwall and Cooper, later he would do the same for Lotus long before Team Lotus scored its first WC victory.
Stirling was the first to win in F1 in a rear-engined car and the last to win in a front-engined car: the unique Ferguson P99 in the 1961 International Gold Cup at Oulton Park. There are ignorant hacks who, thanks to Bernie Ecclestone's PR machine, think that only WC events count as F1 races, but the field for the Gold Cup included Jack Brabham, Graham Hill, Jim Clark and John Surtees to name only future World Champions.
Conditions were damp, which suited the Ferguson and in winning Moss was not only the last driver to win an F1 race in a front-engined car, but the only one to win in a car with four-wheel drive. He could jump into any car and drive at its limit. Many obituaries record that he won 212 races of the 529 he entered, but these figures include events from the post-Goodwood crash era. The win/start ratio of his professional career was much more impressive and he achieved it in 84 makes of car.
Stirling crashed at Goodwood on Easter Monday, 1962. There is a small irony, given his fierce patriotism, that the date was 23rd April, the day of England's patron saint, St. George. He has no recollection of racing that day and only a couple of photos were taken of the crash. It is no exaggeration to say that the nation held its breath as he lay in a coma for 38 days, the BBC initially broadcast extra news bulletins. He was not just a successful sportsman, he embodied qualities we like to think are essentially English, like a sense of fair play.
For six months he was partially paralysed down his left side. He has since convinced the world that his recovery was more complete than it actually was. His memory was remarkable up to the crash, but he never recovered his short-term memory.
Just over a year after his crash he returned to Goodwood to drive a Lotus 19-Climax. This was a low-key occasion and the photos were taken by a friend, John Brierley, landlord of the pub in Chichester where Stirling used to stay when racing at Goodwood.
Stirling lapped the Lotus quicker than most people could but he found that he had to think about actions which once came instinctively so he decided to hang up his helmet. Later he would say that he had been premature and that things like concentration did return but by then he had created a new life for himself.
Moss's crash deprived fans of future clashes with Clark, Hill and Surtees and also the sight of him in an F1 Ferrari. In 1951 Enzo had offered Stirling a drive in the F1 Bari GP. Though not included in the World Championship the race was over a full Grand Prix distance and the presence of Scuderia Ferrari and of Fangio in a works Alfa Romeo gave the event status.
After Stirling had made the long drive to Bari he discovered that Ferrari had given the drive to someone else. This offended Stirling's sense of honour and he refused to have anything to do with Ferrari though he did race privately owned examples.
Ten years on from Bari, Ferrari was having a splendid season with the T156 'sharknose' but at Monaco and the Nurburgring, Stirling in a year-old Lotus, with 25% less power, defeated the Scuderia. Most F1 races in 1961 were not for the Championship; the four-strong Ferrari team won seven and S C Moss won seven. Enzo rated Stirling as the greatest post-war driver, and he had won World Championships with Ascari and Fangio, and he began to make overtures and unprecedented concessions.
For 1962 Moss was to have the latest F1 Ferrari, but entered by Rob Walker in his colours and competing against Scuderia Ferrari. It was a deal without parallel in the history of the sport, but then no driver has ever had comparable status among his contemporaries.
Moss in a Ferrari versus Scuderia Ferrari is a great 'what if' which so nearly happened.
Once he recovered from the worst effects of his accident Stirling threw his boundless energy into Stirling Moss Ltd. He was a celebrity before the age of celebrities yet his home number was in the London phone book. This is in contrast to lesser people whose ego demands that they have an entourage. He was a natural broadcaster and featured in the very first programme of Channel 4 in 1982.
In 1984 Bernie Ecclestone gave him a run on the short Brands Hatch 'Indy' circuit in Nelson Piquet's Championship-winning Brabham BT52-BMW. It was Stirling's first drive on slick tyres and his first experience of a turbocharged racing engine. I was the entire press corps. He did not set the track alight, he was about five seconds slower than Pierluigi Martini who was being tested. He did acclimatise quickly to previously unknown elements, but could not drive quickly because his body was not conditioned to ground effect.
It is hard to think of anyone else whose career ended in 1962 who was so recognisable that they could advertise products fifty years later. Stirling was famous for more than seventy years, he has been part of the landscape of my life. Those of us of a certain age remember 'Eagle' a comic with values (it was founded by a vicar). There was the Eagle Club (I was a member) and among the vice-presidents was Stirling Moss. 'Merling Stross' was a racing driver in a comic strip.
'Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?' That was said to be a copper's favourite line to a speeding driver. I experienced it once, as a passenger. The person, not a copper but on the edge of road rage, said, 'Who do you think you... oh you are Stirling Moss.' That was the end of the confrontation.
Stirling quietly retired from driving on the road about 15 years ago, probably encouraged by his wife. He gave up competition driving in 2011 having frightened himself in a Porsche at Le Mans. His departure was typical of the man, a straight-forward honest statement with no PR bull.
The paddock at the Goodwood Revival Meeting is a tribute to his career. Once I was showing a pal around: 'With this car, Stirling... With that car Moss...' and then I saw some crumpet dressed as Playboy bunnies. 'Hold on,' I said, 'he is here,' and moments later he appeared.
For the last forty years of his life Stirling found contentment with Susie, his third wife. He said that he was glad that his knighthood came late otherwise the wrong wife might have got the title, 'Lady'. Lady Moss was more than just a blessed partner, she allowed him to function because he had never fully covered from that 1962 crash. When she was incapacitated, Stirling had to cancel all his engagements.
No other driver in history has made an impact equal to that of Stirling Moss. No other driver has been so recognisable or has set so many landmarks or has recorded so many great drives and all the while being the perfect gentleman. When you spoke to Stirling, he made you feel like the most important and interesting person in the world.
'Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch'.
Learn more about Mike and check out his previous features, here