Great Britain’s favourite racing driver Sir Stirling Moss OBE has been named President of the Historic Grand Prix Cars Association, a body which has celebrated and protected the heritage of cutting-edge competition cars built from the late 1920s through to 1965 since its foundation in 1979. Sir Stirling, winner of 16 Grands Prix, was runner-up in the Formula One World Championship every year from 1955-’58 (three times behind Juan Manuel Fangio of Argentina and the last time to Englishman Mike Hawthorn) and third from 1959-’61.
Moss, who first raced as a teenager in 1947, remains the most prolifically successful racer of all time. He won 212 of the 529 races he entered, including Grands Prix for Daimler-Benz, Maserati, Vanwall and Rob Walker Racing, for which he scored maiden victories for the iconic Cooper and Lotus marques and Coventry-Climax engines. Highlights of his parallel sportscar career were the fabled 1955 Mille Miglia victory with journalist Denis Jenkinson for Mercedes-Benz, and seven Tourist Trophy wins (the last four at Goodwood), 1959’s victory sealing the Manufacturer’s World Championship for Aston Martin.
His frontline career was cruelly cut short by the terrible accident at Goodwood on Easter Monday, 1962, which left him critically injured. Although tempted back to the cockpit by Audi in the 1980 British Saloon Car Championship (driving alongside current Sky TV Formula 1 commentator Martin Brundle), his return to modern racing circles was brief.
Stirling’s subsequent participation in historic racing brought renewed enjoyment of the wonderful cars he raced in their heyday. And won him legions of new fans, his mastery of a Maserati 250F in the wet at Goodwood in 1999 reminding onlookers of his sublime car control. Britain’s most highly respected racer finally hung up his helmet during practice for an historic race at Le Mans last summer. He had contested the Le Mans 24 Hour race 10 times, finishing second with Peter Walker (Jaguar C-type, 1953) and Peter Collins (Aston Martin DB3S, 1956).
Sir Stirling Moss’ patronage of the HGPCA, which he describes as “an honour and my pleasure,” coincides with the return to the tracks of the Lotus 18 in which he won his last two World Championship rounds, the Monaco and the German GPs of 1961. The old warhorse – which the late Tom Wheatcroft acquired in the late 1960s as he built his museum at the Donington Park circuit in Leicestershire – has not been raced in more than 40 years. The car will return to the racing circuit at Silverstone in April for the first round of the HGPCA 2012 calendar.
For further details, please contact HGPCA Competition Secretary Marcus Pye.
E-Mail: marcuspye@waitrose.com Tel: +44 (0) 7710 094522. www.hgpca.com
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