Stirling Moss
{{Former F1 driver|
Name = Stirling Moss |
Image = |
Nationality =
British | Years =
1950 -
1962 | Team(s) =
Alfa Romeo,
Ferrari,
Mercedes-Benz,
Maserati,
Vanwall |
Races = 66 |
Championships = 0 |
Wins = 16 |
Podiums = ? |
Poles = 16 |
Fastest laps = 19 |
First race =
1950 British Grand Prix | First win =
1955 British Grand Prix| Last win =
1961 Monaco Grand Prix | Last race = ? |
Sir Stirling Moss MBE (born
September 17,
1929 in
London) is a retired
British racing driver. His success in a variety of categories placed him among the world's elite; he is regarded as the greatest driver never to win the
Formula One World Drivers' Championship [1].
Moss, who raced from 1948 to 1962, won 194 of the 497 races he entered, including 16
Formula One Grands Prix. He once told an interviewer that he had participated in 525 races overall, as many as 62 in a single year, in 84 different cars. Like many drivers of the era, he competed in several formulae - sometimes at the same time.
Stirling Moss was a pioneer in the British
Formula One racing scene and placed second in the Drivers' Championship four times in a row from 1955 to 1958.
Moss' first
Formula One win was in 1955 at his home race, the
British Grand Prix at
Aintree, driving the superb
Mercedes-Benz W196 Monoposto for a convincing German 1-2-3-4 win, with
Karl Kling and
Piero Taruffi as further pilots in the international driver line-up. It was the only race where he finished in front of Fangio, his teammate, friend, mentor and archrival at
Mercedes. It is sometimes debated whether Fangio, one of the all-time great gentlemen of sport, yielded the lead at the last corner to let Moss win in front of his home crowd. Moss himself asked Fangio repeatedly, "Did you let me win?" and Fangio always replied, "No. You were just better than me that day."
|
Stirling Moss & Denis Jenkinson |
One of his most famous drives was in the 1955
Mille Miglia, the Italian 1597 km open-road endurance race, which he won in record time, finishing 10 hours and 8 minutes ahead of second-place
Juan Manuel Fangio. His co-driver in the
Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR #722 (indicating the time of the start) was journalist
Denis Jenkinson. Like other co-drivers, he supported Moss with notes about details of the long road trip, then an innovative technique among rallying co-drivers. This assistance helped Moss compete against drivers with a large amount of local knowledge of the route. Jenkinson later wrote extensively about the experience.
In 1957 Moss won on the longest circuit to ever hold a Grand Prix, the daunting 25 kilometer
Pescara Circuit, again demonstrating his skills at high speed, long distance driving. He beat friend, mentor and archrival Fangio, who started on pole, by a little over 3 minutes over the course of a gruelling 3 hour race.
Moss believed the manner in which the battle was fought was as important as the outcome. This sporting attitude cost him the 1958 World Championship. When rival
Mike Hawthorn was threatened with a penalty in a
Portugal race, Moss defended Hawthorn's actions. Hawthorn went on to beat Moss by one point, even though he had only won one race that year to Moss's four, making Hawthorn Britain's first World Champion.
For the 1961 F1 season, which was run under 1.5-liter rules,
Enzo Ferrari rolled out his state-of-the-art
Ferrari 156, also known as
Sharknose. Moss was stuck with an underpowered
Coventry-Climax, but managed to win the
1961 Monaco Grand Prix by a mere 3.6 seconds, and later also the partially wet
1961 German Grand Prix.
In 1962, Moss was badly injured in a crash at
Goodwood while driving a
Lotus. The accident put him in a coma and partially paralyzed the left side of his body.
[2] He recovered, made a premature attempt at a comeback, but found he was not fit enough and retired from GP racing. He has continued to race in historic cars.
During his career, Moss drove a private
Jaguar, and raced for
Maserati,
Vanwall,
Lotus,
Cooper, and
Briggs Cunningham, as well as the
Mercedes-Benz. He preferred to race British cars stating "Better to lose honorably in a British car than win in a foreign one"
[3]. The British cars were often uncompetitive and this was considered the reason he never won the drivers' championship. At Vanwall, he (and especially
Jack Brabham at Cooper) was instrumental in breaking the German/Italian stranglehold on F1 racing, kick-starting the British domination of single-seater racing design and engineering that continues to this day.
Complete Formula One results
(Note: Grands Prix in
bold denote
points scoring races.)
For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are? Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him.
In 1990, Moss was inducted into the
International Motorsports Hall of Fame.
In June 2005, while appearing at the
Goodwood Revival, Moss signed the bonnet of his 1955
Mille Miglia-winning
Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR which is due to enter the
Mercedes-Benz museum in
Stuttgart.
* Stirling Moss is the son of
Alfred Moss, who placed 14th at the 1924
Indianapolis 500 in a
"Fronty" Ford.
* Moss' younger sister,
Pat Moss, also engaged in
Rally racing and married rally racer
Erik Carlsson.
*
Mille Miglia*
International Motorsports Hall of Fame*
Juan Manuel Fangio*
Sir Stirling Moss - The Authorised Web Site*
Grand Prix History - Hall of Fame, Stirling Moss
*
Alfred Moss - his father racing at Brooklands, Sir Stirling Moss is now the president of the Brooklands Society.
