Stirling Moss

Interesting facts

Stirling Moss racked up 16 Grand Prix wins in his F1 career - more than any other driver who never won the title - yet finished runner-up four years running (1955-58) and third for three more (1959-61). After his first win at the 1955 British Grand Prix, he kept asking teammate Fangio whether he had deliberately let him win - Fangio always gave the same answer: "No. You were just better than me that day." At the 1955 Mille Miglia, he and navigator Denis Jenkinson covered the 1,000-mile Italian road race in 10 hours and 7 minutes in a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR - still widely called the greatest single day's drive in motorsport history. At the 1958 Portuguese Grand Prix, Moss defended rival Mike Hawthorn before the stewards over a penalty - at season's end Hawthorn beat Moss to the title by a single point, despite winning four fewer races. After a severe crash at Goodwood in 1962, he spent a month in a coma and battled left-side paralysis for six months; though he recovered, he never regained his instinctive feel for driving and retired from racing. Stirling Moss raced in Formula 1 from 1951 to 1961, across 11 seasons as a British driver. He scored a total of 185.64 championship points over his career.