How Sir Stirling Moss transcended his sport and became not just a motorsport legend, but a British sporting icon
Sunday 12 April 2020 15:08, UK
Mr Motor Racing.
The best driver to never win the world championship.
Just two of the descriptions exclusively reserved for Sir Stirling Moss in recognition of a career and life that transcended the sport in which he made his name.
A 16-time grand prix winner (from just 66 starts). A record-breaking victor of the demanding 1,000 mile Mille Miglia road race. And the holder of an astonishing record of 212 wins from 375 finishes across an array of motorsport disciplines from the age of 18 in 1948 to 32 in 1962, when an accident at Goodwood ended his top-flight career and left him in in a coma for a month.
Sir Stirling was a trailblazer - and a classy one at that. A true British sporting icon if there ever was one.
And, undisputedly, a charismatic one too.
World War Two was still fresh in the mind when Moss, born in London in 1929, started racing in the late 1940s, shaping the attitudes of young men willing to take a risk. Danger was an ever-present, yet it also brought a desire to wring as much enjoyment from life as possible.
Racing drivers were devil-may-care characters, yet labelling Moss a playboy would be stretching things too far. Tee-total, employing a manager, with sponsorship deals and racing 52 weekends a year, he was a consummate professional. Stirling just liked "chasing crumpet", that's all.
Reflecting the era in which he raced, Sir Stirling was a true sportsman too.
Famously, Moss never became world champion, instead finishing runner-up four times (in successive years between 1955 and 1958) and in third on three occasions.
He came closest to the title in 1958. In that year's Portuguese GP, that season's third-last round, he beat Mike Hawthorn and later sprung to the defence of his fellow Englishman when he was disqualified for bump-starting his car.
Stewards re-instated Hawthorn as a result of his rival's testimony and he went on to become the first British title winner, beating Moss by a single point.
He was also team-mate to the driver who defined F1's first decade - Juan-Manuel Fangio.
Four years after making his F1 debut, the 25-year-old Moss was signed to be the Argentine great's team-mate for 1955 and, driving for the iconic Silver Arrows, the Englishman took his maiden GP win, fittingly, in the British GP at Aintree, ahead of Fangio.
Some wondered whether Fangio had backed off in his late pursuit to let his young team-mate have his moment in the limelight. The reigning champion's classy response? "It was your day."
1955 was certainly a standout year for Moss.
Together with co-driver Denis Jenkinson at the Mille Miglia in Italy, Stirling lapped the course, almost 1,000 miles in length, at an average speed of almost 100mph. It's a triumph that set the tone for his career: in the absence of a title, it's the individual performances that have slipped into legend.
By 1961, Moss was driving for private entrant Rob Walker in Formula 1. Ferrari were dominant that season and yet Stirling's skill overcame the handicap of his underpowered Lotus to win both Monaco and the German Grands Prix. The latter victory, on the 14-mile Nurburgring, was his final World Championship hurrah.
Moss returned briefly in 1980 to race in the British Touring Car Championship (for Audi alongside a young Martin Brundle) but, by that stage, too much time had been spent away. Knighted in 2000, Sir Stirling continued to compete in historic events before retiring, aged 81, all over again.
He continued to be a regular and popular attendee at motorsport events before retiring from public life in 2018.
