#TBT Today we highlight racing driver, Stirling Moss. Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss, OBE (born 17 September 1929) is a former Formula One racing driver from England. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he achieved success in several categories of competition and has been described as the greatest driver never to win the World Championship. In the United States when you hear the name Mario Andretti the first image that comes to your mind is auto racing. The same can be said for Stirling Moss on the other side of the pond. Moss was born to racing with both parents involved in motorsports. Moss, who raced from 1948 to 1962, won 212 of the 529 races he entered, including 16 Formula One Grands Prix. He would compete in as many as 62 races in a single year and drove 84 different makes of car over the course of his racing career, including Cooper 500, ERA, Lotus, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Vanwall single-seaters, Aston Martin, Maserati, Ferrari, Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz sports cars, and Jaguar saloons. Like many drivers of the era, he competed in several formulae, often on the same day. He preferred to race British cars, stating, Better to lose honourably in a British car than win in a foreign one. At Vanwall, he was instrumental in breaking the German/Italian stranglehold on F1 racing (as was Jack Brabham at Cooper). He remained the English driver with the most Formula One victories until 1991 when Nigel Mansell overtook him after competing in more races. Moss was considered by many as being the first modern professional driver who raced for the love of the sport but also was intent on earning a sizable income. Staying in top physical shape he would travel all over the world to race. He was not above haggling for more appearance money and between races he would work at his home office dealing with correspondence, managing endorsements or recording his thoughts for his latest book. He had begun writing books about the sport and would later comment that when he would race in a particular country the sales of his book there would increase. This would help to increase his fame and conversely the amount of money he could require in exchange for his appearance. He courted endorsements as no other driver of his day and was sometimes ridiculed for this when in truth he was just ahead of his time. In the end he was a racer who enjoyed driving all sorts of cars and raced only to win. Moss still keeps track of the current Grand Prix scene and is not hesitant to voice his opinion on current circuit design and their vast run-off areas and ubiquitous chicanes. To race a car through a turn at maximum speed, is difficult, he said, but to race a car at maximum speed through that same turn when there is a brick wall on one side and a precipice on the other - Ah, thats an achievement.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 14:00:00 +0000
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