Sir Stirling Moss, one of the greatest racing drivers of all time, has died in London at the age of 90 after a long illness.
Britain’s superstar driver of the 1950s and early ’60s, Moss won 212 of the 529 races he started, including 16 Formula 1 grands prix. Fast and versatile—he would drive 84 different cars in his career, competing in as many as 62 races a year—Moss was unlucky not to win the Formula 1 World Championship, finishing second four times in a row from 1955 through 1958, and third three times running from 1959 to 1961.
He retired from top-level racing in 1962 after a testing crash at Goodwood left him in a coma for a month. Ever the perfectionist behind the wheel, he felt the crash had robbed him of the edge he needed to win.
Born in London in 1929, Stirling Craufurd Moss began his career in 1948, racing tiny, 500-cc-powered mid-engine Coopers. His first major international race victory came in the 1950 RAC Tourist Trophy, in a Jaguar XK120. His first F1 win was in the 1955 British Grand Prix, driving a W196 Mercedes-Benz. He was the first British driver to win his home grand prix.
The 1955 season was a highlight. Signed to the factory Mercedes team, Moss not only won the British Grand Prix, but also that year’s RAC Tourist Trophy, the Targa Florio, and the Mille Miglia in the 300SLR sports racer. The 1955 Mille Miglia win, in which Moss averaged just under 100 mph for the 1000-mile race, stands as one of the greatest drives in the history of motorsport.
When Mercedes withdrew from racing in 1955, Moss spent two seasons with Maserati, then joined the British Vanwall team for the 1958 season. As the Vanwall car was not ready for the first race, the Argentine Grand Prix, Moss drove a Cooper-Climax for privateer Rob Walker and won. It was the first victory for a rear-engine car in the modern Formula 1 era.
Stirling Moss was a sportsman in the true sense of the term. When fellow British driver and championship rival Mike Hawthorn had spun and stalled his Ferrari in the 1958 Portuguese Grand Prix on an uphill section of the track, Moss yelled at him to bump-start the car by rolling it downhill, and later defended Hawthorn against disqualification by the stewards by insisting he’d been off the track while traveling the opposite direction.
Hawthorn therefore kept his six points for his second-place finish and went on to win the World Championship over Moss by just one point, even though he’d won just a single Grand Prix to Moss’s four during the season.
After retiring from top-level racing, Moss went on to run a property business with his family. A technophile, he built a house in Mayfair, London, to his own design in the 1960s that featured high-tech gadgetry such as pushbutton controls to run a bath at a predetermined temperature, drop a table from the ceiling for TV dinners, and hide his TV and audio system behind wooden panels. It later featured a carbon-fiber elevator made for him by the Williams F1 team.
Moss didn’t entirely stay away from racing after his retirement. He competed in the London-Sahara-Munich World Cup Rally in 1974 and shared a Holden Torana with Jack Brabham in the 1976 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 at Bathurst. He drove a factory-backed Audi in the 1980 and 1981 British Touring Car Championship.
Moss also worked as a brand ambassador for various automakers, including Chrysler Australia and Jaguar. His longest association was with Mercedes-Benz, with whom he was a regular visitor to the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and other classic car events.
Sir Stirling is survived by his third wife, Susie, and two children. “He died as he lived, looking wonderful,” Lady Moss told Britain’s Daily Mail on Sunday. “It was one lap too many. He just closed his eyes.”