The story of British racing legend Stirling Moss

2 months ago, (17 September), the British racing legend sir Stirling Moss turned 88, and to celebrate: here’s his story, from 1948, to 1962.

Born in London to Alfred Moss and Aileen Crauford Moss, who were both amateur racers. his father, Alfred, was a dentist. He was brought up at the “Long White Cloud” house on the east bank of the Thames.

Of all the careers Stirling could’ve mentioned to his father to make him proud, racing was it. In a time when professional racing was virtually forbidden, so how did he do it? He persuaded his father to let him become a racing driver, rather than a dentist, by letting him buy a Cooper 500 out of his own money that he had earned from horse-riding events, making him competitive in Formula 3.

The first time he won a race on international scale was on his 21st birthday, when he raced a Jaguar XK120 in Northern Ireland during the 1950 Dundrod TT.

I should explain, legendary drivers (in the ‘50s) were active in all types of motorsport at the same time: Formula (1-3), Rally, and GT races. And naturally, he was very succesful in this, too. At the Monte-Carlo Rallye, he won a gold cup thrice, each times with getting any penalties.

In 1953, Alfred Neubauer spoke to Stirling’s manager, talking about how well he did for a relatively uncompetitive car in the GP, and asked if he could join the Mercedes-Benz team for the 1954 season, and after a long conversation came to the conclusion that Stirling needed a new car, after chasing after that one patriotic victory: the first Brit to win the British Grand Prix in a British car, and ended up buying a Maserati 250F. The only problem was that the car was unreliable, meaning he didn’t score many points, but in one race he managed to overtake the 2 best drivers of the times, Juan Manuel Fangio, and Alberto Ascari, and held the lead until the 68th lap, when his engine failed, but was signed for Mercedes in 1955 regardless.

Also, despite not becoming the first Brit to win a world championship (in fact, he never won any, he was named “the best driver, never to win a world championship”), but he did get a number of other firsts, one of which is; he was (the) FIRST, non-American to win the 12 hours of Sebring, in 1954.

Anyway, 1955, the weirdest year of them all, it was good… yet awful. off course, there is the record that Moss set at the Mille Miglia, with the now famous #722 Mercedes 300 SLR, and he also managed to win the Targa Florio, Goodwood RAC Tourist Throphy, and he managed to get his first win in Formula 1 thanks to Mercedes’ build quality. But fate intervened, because after the 1955 Le Mans incident, Stirling was left unemployed… the horrific crash that he witnissed, made Mercedes retreat from motorsport.

As re-assignment, he joined Vanwall for the 1956 season, to proceed trying to win a GP in a British car.
In 1957 he managed to set a lap time record on the Italian Nürburgring, the Pescara circuit, a 25.8 km long circuit, on which he set a lap of 9:44.6 in the Vanwall VW5, which, during the same year, he managed to achieve what he was trying to for all this time; win the British GP, in a British car. and so, on Silverstone, 1957, he won the British GP in the Vanwall VW5

Another first: in 1958, Stirling was the first to win a Grand Prix race in a mid-engined car, the Lotus-Climax 18.

But then, what could’ve been total domination of Formula 1, never came to be due to the accident, in 1962.

In 1961, after beating the Ferrari 156 “Sharknose” in the plenty slower Lotus-Climax 18, Enzo Ferrari got into contact with Stirling (for the second time, the first time his position was taken by what would later become his rival, and the first Brit to win the world championship, Mike Hawthorn) to give him a guaranteed position in the Ferrari Formula 1 team, he denied, and instead said he should build a 156 in the Rob Walker Racing livery (the racing team he raced for from 1958-1962), and sell it to Rob Walker, and give him a 250 GTO to his specification. Enzo, complied, and started building and discussing Stirling’s perfect Formula 1 racer, but during a race on the Goodwood circuit in 1962, during a race he participated in during his spare time, the steering of his Cooper-Climax T57 failed, sending the car into the wall, leaving Stirling in a coma for a little over a month. He got the 250 GTO, which was raced by rivals and friends Innes Ireland and Masten Gregory for testing. Its last race in which it competed under Stirling’s ownership was the Goodwood TT, August 1962, driven by Innes Ireland.

The last race that Stirling participated in was the 1962 12 houurs of Sebring, in an Austin-Healey Sebring Sprite, after which he felt that racing would now be too dangerous in his condition, meaning he retired from professional racing forgood. And from 1962 to 1980, he had a career in broadcasting, until leaving ABC.

What would I say is his finest hour? the 1961 Goodwood TT, where he won his 4th consecutive race at Goodwood, using my favourite car (which just so happens is my profile pic).