Sir Stirling Moss, a great British sportsman — and a mensch
V SIR STIRLING Moss, who died on Sunday at 90, was one of the greatest British sportsmen of all time.
Widely regarded as the best driver never to win the world championship, he won 16 of the 66 Formula 1 races he competed in from 1951 to
1961 and an astonishing 212 of the 529 races in which he competed throughout his career.
He was also a mensch.
In 1958 he lost the word championship to Mike Hawthorn after preventing Hawthorn being disqualified for reversing on the track during the Portuguese Grand Prix. Moss vouched for his rival and, in so doing, lost the title to him.
I met Sir Stirling when I was a boy. I was staying overnight at Silverstone racetrack for a race known as the International Trophy (a race he had himself won) and was introduced to him in the early evening. Without the slightest idea who I was or why I was even there, within five minutes he asked me if I wanted a drive round the circuit. Being Stirling Moss, he was able to commandeer a car and no jobsworth was willing to tell him, “You can’t do that.”
And so I am now able to tell the story of how, as a teenage boy, I was driven — at considerable speed — by Stirling Moss on a lap of Silverstone.
Although not halachically Jewish,
Moss’s father, Alfred, was Jewish. Sir Stirling’s grandfather had changed his surname to Moss from Moses.
Alfred was a well-known London dentist whose main practice was in Bond Street, and had 17 other practices across the city.
At Haileybury School, Stirling was the victim of antisemitic bullying. He later attributed his success to the fact that, “The bullying made me very cussed and determined, and being good at sport helped. At that time I didn’t have any real ambitions because it was assumed that I would become a dentist like my father.”
Moss was runner-up for the world championship four times but was forced to retire in 1962 after a crash at Goodwood left him in a coma for a month and partially paralysed for six months. But he carried on racing in historic cars and legends events until the age of 81.
Sir Stirling had been ill for some years. After his death, his wife said: “It was one lap too many, he just closed his eyes”.
I was driven by Sir Stirling on a lap of Silverstone