Driver Focus - Stirling Moss

Stirling Moss is like no other driver the world has ever seen or ever will. He, unlike any other driver you will ever speak to, relished the danger.

​Safety in motorsport is something that people tend to take for granted. It has been 17 years since the last death in Formula One. When Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger were both killed at Imola in 1994, safety standards became the number one priority in the sport. Despite there being some horrific accidents since, there have been no deaths and few serious injuries.

In an era which saw death as just a part of the sport, Stirling Moss rose above the rest to be one of the greatest drivers the world had ever seen. Despite retiring from Formula One after a life threatening crash at Goodwood in 1962, Moss continued to race until he was 81. In June 2011 he finally hung up his driving gloves.

To some, Stirling Moss was the greatest driver never to win the Formula One World Championship. From 1955 to 1958, he finished second in the standings four years in a row.

​His first victory came in 1955 at the British Grand Prix. The victory was even more special to him as he had beaten the man who, in his mind, was the greatest driver to have ever lived - Juan Manuel Fangio. However, Moss was never convinced that he had truly won that day.

Fangio was not only a great driver, but he was also one of the sport’s great gentleman racers and Moss was always convinced that Fangio yielded the position to him so he could win his home race. For years following he would ask: ‘Did you let me win?’ but the Argentinean would always answer: ‘You were just better than me that day.’

This was an era when the manner of which a race was won was just as important as the victory itself - when British driver Mike Hawthorn still drove every race in a shirt and bow-tie. But this gentlemanly sportsmanship cost Moss the Drivers’ Championship in 1958.

​At the Portuguese Grand Prix, Hawthorn spun and stalled his car on an uphill section. Moss shouted to him to drive the car down the hill to jump-start the engine, which he did and managed to bring the car home in second (behind Moss).

The stewards threatened to exclude him from the standings for dangerous driving but Moss defended him and Hawthorn was able to keep his points.

The 1958 Championship went to Hawthorn - he was the first British driver to ever become Champion; a Championship that could have gone to Moss.

In 1962, a crash at Goodwood brought Moss' career to a stand-still. His body was thrown forward in the car and his head was wrapped around his steering wheel. The accident left him in a coma and partially paralysed on his left side.

Moss himself was not aware of how much the crash had affected him until he got back in a car again months later. He drove a Lotus 19 in a private test and lapped only a few tenths slower than he was doing before the accident but did not feel comfortable in the car.

“I found myself thinking through the corners. It was no longer instinctual. I scared myself and I had always said that if I was scared then I knew it was time to give it up.”

Medical experts believed Moss was simply a victim of his own stubbornness. He had attempted to return too early and if he had waited another 6 months he would have been able to recover most of his strength. Sadly we will never know.

Moss always prided himself on being able to ‘go to a different place’ when he was driving. He was able to focus on the driving and channel out any unnecessary distractions.

When racing in the Mille Miglia, his co-driver had to use a series of hand signals to convey messages as Moss’ hearing was impaired as his brain was concentrating so hard on the car and on the road ahead that his other senses were shutting down.

​This channelling out of unnecessary distractions was always in contrast with interviews he gave after his victory at the Monaco Grand Prix. Moss’ brain may have considered his hearing to not be a priority when he was driving but to this day he seems to be able to describe, in great detail, the girls with pale pink lipstick waving to him at Loews hairpin. Clearly his mind had very unique priorities.

​When it came to summing up Moss’ mentality about racing; no one said it better than the man himself: “The danger, for me, was an important ingredient. Just like salt is for cooking.

“Obviously you can’t say that we should change things and make them more dangerous but I will say that I am glad that I raced when it was dangerous.

“The exhilaration of going around a corner at 140-150mph and knowing that if you go off you might die, sure makes you feel pretty good when you come out of it and you haven’t died.”