Sir Stirling Moss: PH Meets
An impromptu chat with Sir Stirling reveals memories of the DBR1 at the Nurburgring
Moss confers with Bez and that 007 bloke
The car we’re sitting next to – the Aston Martin DBR1 that Moss has just driven in the centenaryparade lap – seems as good a point as any to start off with. How did Sir Stirling find it? “It was a great car to race, but a lousy car to drive,” he says. “It comes into its own when you’re really driving it hard. Pussying it around really isn’t its best style.” So there was no temptation to say ‘sod the 60km/h limit, let’s give it its head’, then? “No, no,” he says with a smile. “The thing I do when I drive a car like this is to try and feel how good it was, you know.” But Sir Stirling implies that there is still a desire to do so, even if he wouldn’t go through with it. “I mean I had to do a thing the other day in a C-Type Jag,” he adds, “and of course, it’s like having a beautiful girl, but she won’t go to bed with you!”
With time short, we turn our attention to the track. Was driving it again a bit of a blast from the past? Sir Stirling says so. “What I did do, I must say, was to go on the line, which was interesting for me,” he says. “As much as at any circuit in the world, there are certain corners here which make an enormous difference – the corners on the way back from Adenau have quite an incline. Of course, going at the speed we were going just now, they just didn’t exist, but I still went on the line I’d be on. But you see, when you’re racing, you’ve got so much centripetal force pushing you out.”
DBR1 great to race, but lousy to drive, says Moss
It turned out to be a gruelling race, though, with a coming-together putting Fairman and Moss way down the pack. “Jack got pushed off by a small car and had to push the Aston out of a bloody ditch to get it out. I’d already taken my helmet off thinking ‘He’s not coming back’, and then suddenly they were telling me ‘He’s coming in!’ But we’d lost minutes. Then I had to go like hell, which I enjoy, because then they don’t mind if you really, you know, beat yourself.” Moss didn’t just beat himself, though – he went on to win. That must have felt pretty good, I say, but Moss isn’t one for self-celebration. “I enjoy racing as the underdog,” comes the reply. “The public always cheer on the underdog. The fact was that I happened to have lost four to five minutes, or they had been lost for me, and there I was trying to catch up. I enjoy racing with that much pressure.“
All too soon, our five minutes together are up, and Sir Stirling is whisked off, doubtless to fulfil yet more duties. And we're left with the slightly dazed feeling you get when you suddenly become aware that you’ve just been in the presence of true greatness.
Chris Harris is out in Italy right now in a Mille Miglia remembrance. A regularity rally.
Back in the day, Sir Stirling took the record for this rally with an average speed of 100mph. On narrow country lanes. In 1955. Wearing nothing more than a cotton overall and a leather helmet.
He is from an era where plenty of drivers regularly died every season. Imagine that nowadays - can you imagine the 2013 F1 season starting with the knowledge that , in all probability, some of the drivers would not make it to the end? That is the way it was in his era , but they did it anyway.
Respect, sir. Much respect.
I love motoring and motor racing anecdotes - especially ones like this. End of.
Enjoy him whilst we've still got him.. the falling down the lift shaft frightened the wits out of me. At his age it should have finished him.. what a warrior.
Check out the stories to his sports car racing in the 50's, his GP wins in not the most competitive cars, his Monaco GP win in the Lotus was a masterstroke.
Am I a fan.. you bet.!
For my money, he is the GREATEST living Englishman. I do not believe we will ever see his like again.. that generation is leaving us now.
I know this is often said of great personalities, but the motor-sport world has changed out of all recognition from Moss' heyday.. several drives per day, different classes, sports cars, sports racers, GP cars, small and large saloons.
I have been lucky to meet, and sometimes get to know some of the truly great drivers.. the outstanding ones were Fangio, Vic Elford and Moss.
Seven world GP titles notwithstanding.. I regard Moss as the best.. as a driver and more importantly.. as a human.. as a man.
MOSS.. the real hero
WF
Winning the '55 Mille. The same year he was the first Briton to win the British Grand Prix. Completed the Mille in 10 hours 7 minutes - HALF AN HOUR ahead of the 2nd place car driven by...Fangio!
He singlehandedly makes up for and negates everything that's crap about Britain.
Not just for his achievements but for being such a nice guy and so impossibly cool to boot.
From Wiki:
This sporting attitude cost him the 1958 Formula 1 World Championship. When rival Mike Hawthorn was threatened with a penalty in the Boavista Urban Circuit in Porto, Portugal, Moss defended Hawthorn's actions. Hawthorn was accused of reversing in the track after spinning and stalling his car on an uphill section of the track. Moss himself shouted the suggestion to Hawthorn that he steer downhill, against traffic, to bump-start the car, which Hawthorn did. Moss's quick thinking and then gracious defence of Hawthorn before the stewards preserved Hawthorn's 6 points for his second-place finish (behind Moss). Hawthorn went on to beat Moss for the title by one point even though he won only one race that year to Moss's four, making Hawthorn Britain's first World Champion.
I love this:
For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him.
End of.
Enjoy him whilst we've still got him.. the falling down the lift shaft frightened the wits out of me. At his age it should have finished him.. what a warrior.
Check out the stories to his sports car racing in the 50's, his GP wins in not the most competitive cars, his Monaco GP win in the Lotus was a masterstroke.
Am I a fan.. you bet.!
For my money, he is the GREATEST living Englishman. I do not believe we will ever see his like again.. that generation is leaving us now.
I know this is often said of great personalities, but the motor-sport world has changed out of all recognition from Moss' heyday.. several drives per day, different classes, sports cars, sports racers, GP cars, small and large saloons.
I have been lucky to meet, and sometimes get to know some of the truly great drivers.. the outstanding ones were Fangio, Vic Elford and Moss.
Seven world GP titles notwithstanding.. I regard Moss as the best.. as a driver and more importantly.. as a human.. as a man.
MOSS.. the real hero
WF
I knew a chap that worked for him in the 80's, and he was scarred witless more than once by SM's driving.
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