Stirling Moss Born In London, England - September 17, 1929

September 17, 1929

Stirling Moss 

(Photo: jaguarmena via photopin cc)

Born in London, 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" 

The son of Aileen and Alfred Moss. A dentist, Alfred was also an amateur racing driver who had been placed 16th at the 1924 Indianapolis 500. Stirling was a gifted horse rider as was his younger sister, Pat Moss, who became a successful rally driver and married Erik Carlsson, also a well known rally driver for Saab.

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.

Away from driving, in 1962 he acted as a colour commentator for ABC's Wide World of Sports for Formula One and NASCAR races. He eventually left ABC in 1980.

In 1980 he made a brief comeback in the British Touring Car Championship with Audi, alongside Martin Brundle. More recently he raced in events for historic cars, and campaigned his own OSCA FS 372 during the 2009 season.

On 9 June 2011 during qualifying for the Le Mans Legends race, Moss announced on Radio Le Mans that he had finally retired from racing, saying that he had scared himself that afternoon. He was 81.

For more on Stirling Moss, Amazon carries a large selection of books. 

The latest being; Stirling Moss: The Authorised Biography by Robert Edwards. (Author)

Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss raced professionally over 500 times until his near fatal crash in 1962. At the end of his racing career, he was the most famous Briton - no footballer, jockey, boxer or pop star has approached the national adulation Moss received. In this book Robert Edwards recounts the life of this extraordinary man, whose tally of wins was proportionately higher than that of any other driver, ever, by a wide margin. During his colourful racing career, Stirling Moss was incredibly gifted and competitive, and he has talked in detail to Robert Edwards about his eventful life, from the bullying at school which helped forge his competitive spirit to the crash that almost ended his life.

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