VALE Sir Stirling Moss
Motor racing has lost its uncrowned champion in Sir Stirling Moss OBE, who passed away at his home in on 12 April following a long illness.
Regarded as the greatest Formula 1 driver never to claim the World Drivers’ Championship, Moss was born into a motor racing family, with father Alfred a keen amateur racer and starter at the 1924 Indianapolis 500, while mother Aileen competed in hillclimbs.
Allegedly given his first car aged 9, the young Moss was a skilled equestrian before switching from horses to horsepower. His first race, in 1948, was behind the wheel of his father’s BMW 328. In the same year, he bought a Cooper JAP 500 and raced that successfully in Formula Three.
More wins in sports cars and other junior formulae ultimately saw Moss invited to join the HW Motors team, with whom he made his Formula 1 debut in the 1951 Swiss Grand Prix. His first F1 podium came in a privately-entered, factory-supported Maserati 250F at the 1954 Belgian Grand Prix. A year later, at the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree, Moss secured his first F1 race win in a Mercedes W196 and would finish the championship second overall behind Juan Manuel Fangio.
Back with Maserati in 1956, Moss would secure more race wins and, despite a switch to Vanwall in 1957, would finish second behind Fangio in both those years.
Moss came closest to the drivers’ title in 1958, when he finished a solitary point behind Scuderia Ferrari’s Mike Hawthorn. Over the next three F1 seasons, Moss scored six more race wins and finished third in the championship on each occasion.
While the ultimate prize eluded him, Moss was not defined by Formula 1, with success in other classes – everything from sports car competition, endurance racing, rallying, touring cars and even speed record events - showing him to be one of motorsport’s great all-rounders.
Moss won the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1954 and was second at the Le Mans 24 Hour on two occasions, but his greatest victory would have to be the 1955 Mille Miglia. In a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR, Moss and his navigator Denis Jenkinson covered close to 1,600kms on public roads in Italy, averaging almost 158km/h over ten hours.
Moss’s active racing career was cut short by a serious crash at Goodwood in 1962 that left him in a coma for a month and partially paralysed for a further six. While officially retired, Moss was far from sedentary, taking part in rally and endurance events throughout the 1970s before making a comeback, of sorts, in the British Saloon Car Championship in 1980.
Historic events followed, both demonstration and competition, and it was only at age 81 that Moss decided to hang up the helmet for good.
Over his career, Moss estimates he drove 108 different cars, but would tend to select British-built cars over foreign ones, given the choice. Despite this, Moss would drive Maserati, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari and OSCA in his active competition career, and VW, Audi - and even Holden - after it. Yes, Moss raced a Holden, albeit briefly.
For the 1976 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 at Bathurst, a “dream team” of Moss and Jack Brabham were entered in an L34 Torana. Qualifying in tenth, Brabham stalled on the grid and was hit hard by another car. Although repaired enough for Moss to compete, the Torana’s engine blew after 37 laps.
Some years earlier, Moss had been enticed to Australia to spruik Chrysler’s VG Valiant range, leading to the creation of a limited-edition ‘Stirling Moss Special’ VG 2-door and sedan.
A regular visitor for the F1 Grands Prix at both Adelaide and Melbourne, Moss also attended F1 and historic race meets around the world as a special guest.
Inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1990, Moss was knighted in 2000, received an FIA gold medal in 2006 and even had a special-edition McLaren-Mercedes SLR roadster named after him in 2008.
Sir Stirling Moss OBE, is survived by his third wife, Lady Susie, and two children.
