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Sir Stirling Moss – motor racing legend's life in pictures

 Stirling Moss rounds the old Station Hairpin in Rob Walker’s Lotus 18-Climax during the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix. Photograph: Getty Images

 
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Stirling Moss, arguably the greatest driver never to have won the F1 drivers’ championship, has died. We take a look back at his life

Steven Bloor

Sun 12 Apr 2020 11.26 BST

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    Stirling Moss’s racing career began in 1947, driving a BMW 328 which Moss’s father Alfred acquired from a fellow dentist, Victor Biggs. His fifth race was over a winding course of just over half a mile at the Poole Speed Trials at South Lytchett Manor. Moss finished third in his class. Moss later said that his father’s BMW 328 was “a great little sports car in which I learned a great deal.”

    Photograph: Klemantaski Collection/Getty Images

     
    Stirling Moss in a BMW 328 at the Poole Speed Trials
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    Alfred Moss chats with his young son, Stirling, as he sits in his Cooper-JAP 500 MKII at Silverstone in October 1948. 19 year old Moss was competing in the 500cc race ahead of the first British Grand Prix to be held at Silverstone. Moss qualified on the front row of the grid and was leading for the first three laps before an engine drive sprocket worked loose and Moss eventually retired from the race

    Photograph: Reg Burkett/Keystone/Getty Images

     
    Alfred Moss chats with his young son, Stirling, as he sits in his Cooper-JAP 500 MKII at Silverstone
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    A young and rather pensive looking Moss sits in his HWM-Alta before practice at the 1951 Swiss Grand Prix. Moss later said of the race ‘It all went wrong for me’. His car’s windscreen smashed, meaning that for 30 laps he had to in effect drive one-handed as he held onto his helmet. He said “it was the worst experience I had ever known.” His car ran out of fuel at the line, so he was pipped for seventh place

    Photograph: Klemantaski Collection/Getty Images

     
    Stirling Moss sits in his HWM-Alta before practice at the 1951 Swiss Grand Prix.
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    1951 saw the 22 year-old Stirling Moss experience his first Le Mans 24 Hours, where he drove a Jaguar XK120C with co-driver Jack Fairman. After 92 laps a broken oil pipe meant the oil pressure fell to zero before the engine blew up. The silver lining for Moss was that he broke the lap record

    Photograph: RacingOne/ISC Archives via Getty Images

     
    Stirling Moss at the 1951 Le Mans 24 hours
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    Stirling Moss’s Jaguar C-type is well positioned as he takes the lead at the start of the Goodwood Nine Hours Race in August 1953. Moss held the lead before letting Tony Rolt through on pre-arranged team orders. Neither Jaguar finished the race, as both suffered oil problems with an hour to go

    Photograph: Klemantaski Collection/Getty Images

     
    Stirling Moss’s Jaguar C-type is well positioned as he takes the lead at the start of the Goodwood 9 Hours Race in August 1953.
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    Stirling Moss, photographed in 1953 by the Observer’s Jane Bown.
     
    Sterling Moss, 1953, by Jane Bown
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    Moss rests against his Maserati 250F in the pits at the 1954 Italian Grand Prix. Moss was leading in the latter part of the race and heading for his first GP victory when, with nine laps to go, oil pressure dropped off and the car ground to a halt. Moss got out and pushed the car across the line to claim 10th in the official classification.

    Photograph: David Lees/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

     
    Stirling Moss rests against his Maserati 250F in the pits at the 1954 Italian Grand Prix.
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    Moss and Denis Jenkinson on the Futa Pass in the Mercedes 300SLR during the 1955 Mille Miglia. They won at a record average speed which was never equaled

    Photograph: Yves Debraine/Klemantaski Collection/Getty Images

     
    Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson on the Futa Pass in the Mercedes 300SLR during the 1955 Mille Miglia.
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    Moss has his Maserati 250F in front of Eugenio Castellotti’s Ferrari-Lancia as the field slows for the Gasworks Hairpin during the 1956 Monaco Grand Prix. Moss went on to win the race

    Photograph: Klemantaski Collection/Getty Images

     
    Stirling Moss, the eventual race winner, in his Maserati 250F at the 1956 Monaco Grand Prix
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    Moss swings around a bend in his Aston Martin DB3s as a bunch of photographers stand on the bank behind him, waiting for the next arrival

    Photograph: Klemantaski Collection/Getty Images

     
    Moss swings around a bend in his Aston Martin DB3s as a bunch of photographers stand on the bank behind him, waiting for the next arrival
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    Moss (right) and his Vanwall team-mate Tony Brooks, holding up the Grand Prix Cup after winning the 1957 British GP at the Aintree motor circuit. It was Stirling Moss’s first British GP victory in a British car, and the first GP win by a British car in over 40 years

    Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

     
    Moss (right) and his Vanwall team-mate Tony Brooks, holding up the Grand Prix Cup after winning the 1957 British GP at the Aintree motor circuit. It was Stirling Moss’s first British GP victory in a British car, and the first GP win by a British car in over 40 years
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    Casablanca’s strong late afternoon light illuminates Moss as he presses on in search of victory in the 1958 Morocco Grand Prix. Damage to the nose cone suggests that Moss has been more than usually aggressive in the race in his attempt to win the drivers’ championship. Mike Hawthorn finished second in the race to deny Moss the title

    Photograph: Klemantaski Collection/Getty Images

     
    Stirling Moss in the 1958 Morocco Grand Prix
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    Moss rounds the old Station Hairpin in Rob Walker’s Lotus 18-Climax, on his way to a superb win at the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix which he thought was his best ever race

    Photograph: Getty Images

     
    Moss rounds the old Station Hairpin in Rob Walker’s Lotus 18-Climax, on his way to a superb win at the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix which he thought was his best ever race
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    People tend to an unconscious Moss in his wrecked Lotus 18/21 after crashing in the Glover Trophy Race at Goodwood on Easter Monday 1962. As he approached St Marys, Moss pulled too far to his left and didn’t make the corner, hitting a bank nearly head on at around 60mph. He spent a month in a coma and was paralysed down one side for six months

    Photograph: Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images

     
    People tend to an unconscious Moss in his wrecked Lotus 18/21 after crashing in the Glover Trophy Race at Goodwood on Easter Monday 1962. As he approached St Marys, Moss pulled too far to his left and didn’t make the corner, hitting a bank nearly head on at around 60mph. He spent a month in a coma and was paralysed down one side for six months
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    Pictured in the Bahamas while recuperating from his injuries received in his crash at Goodwood earlier in 1962. Moss recovered but decided to retire from racing after a private test session in a Lotus 19 in 1963. During this session, he lapped a few tenths slower than before, and did not feel he had the command of the car to which he was accustomed.

    Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

     
    Stirling Moss pictured in the Bahamas
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    After recovering from his injuries Moss acted as a reporter and analyst on ABC’s Wide World of Sports coverage of Formula One and Nascar races, eventually making a comeback in the British Saloon Car Championship with the works-backed GTi Engineering Audi team in 1980. “I did make what i can only describe, on reflection, as an ill-starred return to saloon car racing driving an Audi 80,” Moss said later. “I very much regretted ever doing it.”

    Photograph: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch/Getty Images

     
    Stirling Moss in his role as a reporter on ABC’s Wide World of Sports covering  of Formula One and NASCAR races,
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    Thirteen years after his near fatal crash at Goodwood in 1962, Moss made his return to motor racing when he took part in the new sport of Lawn Mower Racing. Combining his enthusiasm for the new sport and showing that his driving skills hadn’t diminished over the years, Moss won the British Grand Prix for lawn mowers in 1975 and again in 1976

    Photograph: Sport & General/S&G and Barratts/Empics Sport

     
    Stirling Moss taking part in a 1975 Lawn Mower race
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    Moss is pictured with his wife, Susie, after their London wedding in April 1980

    Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

     
    Moss is pictured with his wife, Susie, after their London wedding in April 1980
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    The F1 legend became Sir Stirling Moss on 21 March 2000 when he received his Knighthood from the Prince of Wales at an Investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace

    Photograph: John Stillwell/PA

     
    Sir Stirling Moss receives his Knighthood from the Prince of Wales in March 2000
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    Moss does the classic running start in the race of legends before the 2001 Le Mans 24 Hour Race

    Photograph: Mark Thompson/Allsport/Getty Images

     
    Moss does the classic running start in the race of legends before the 2001 Le Mans 24 Hour Race
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    Another gong arrived in 2006 when Sir Stirling Moss was presented with the FIA Academy gold medal

    Photograph: Handout/FIA via Getty Images

     
    Another gong arrived in 2006 when Sir Stirling Moss was presented with the FIA Academy Gold Medal by FIA President Max Mosley
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    Moss photographed at his London home in 2012. To Moss’s left and on his braces is Roary the Racing Car, a children’s TV series which Moss narrated

    Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

     
    Sir Stirling Moss photographed at his London home in W1 in 2012
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    Moss sits in his 1955 British Grand Prix winning Mercedes-Benz W196 single seater before driving up the hill at the 2015 Goodwood Festival of Speed

    Photograph: Charles Coates/Getty Images

     

 

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He drove in 5 NZ Grand Prix races, all at Ardmore, I think I went to several as a very young boy with my Dad

56 1st

59 1st

60 Ret

61 Ret

62 1st (the last one ever held in NZ)

In the 61 race, Jack Brabham beat Bruce McLaren, Graham Hill, Denny Hulme, Jim Clark, Dan Gurney, John Surtees and Innes Ireland.  Throw in Stirling Moss who retired, and what am amazing field.  A lot of people probably do not realise, that these legends of the sport raced in NZ.

 

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