Sir Stirling Moss and Maserati
Reminiscences of a Great Driver and some Great Cars

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Few drivers have achieved worldwide fame to the point where they transcend their sport and become household names. Juan Manuel Fangio, with his five world championships, managed it; so did Michael Schumacher. Earlier this year we had the privilege of meeting a third member of that exclusive club – Sir Stirling Moss. Famed as the greatest driver never to win the Formula One World Championship, he won numerous races – both open-wheel and sports cars, many of them in Maseratis.

We began by asking him about his most memorable races – it turned out not to be such an easy question. “As a driver, the races which stick in your memory are the ones where something bad happened; there was one occasion when I was racing a car being run by a team I wasn’t very impressed with – and the steering sheared at 175 mph,” Moss told us. “That gets your attention – I’m no fool, I knew something was wrong when my arms crossed! One of my better races was the Monaco Grand Prix in 1956, where I took the lead on the opening lap in my Maserati 250F and led the rest of the race; and there’s a bittersweet memory of the 1954 Italian Grand Prix, where I led the race – but then an oil line cracked and I had to push the car across the line to finish tenth. But leading the Italian Grand Prix, at Monza, in a Maserati – that was special.”

Being as revered as he is, Sir Stirling gets invitations to drive all manner of cars, new and old. He recently tried a modern F1 car – we asked him how he liked it. “What was amazing to me was that, when I got up to 185mph and lifted off, I got more deceleration than I ever got in any car I ever raced with the brakes hard on,” he told us. “Then you use the carbon brakes, and the stopping power is enormous. But they’re not fun – at least, not to me. For me, fun is driving a car like the Maserati 250F or the 300S, where you steer the car as much with the throttle as with the steering wheel. You use the steering to ‘present’ the car into a corner, and then you control it on the throttle – and that, to me, is the whole art of driving fast. I still feel that the 250F was one of the finest-handling front-engined cars ever built; a rear-engined car would beat it, but for a front-engined car, it was lovely.”

When he mentioned the Maserati 300S, we asked him about what Maserati sports cars he had driven. “I remember when the 2-liter Birdcage came out – it was a super car, it really was,” he recalled. “And then Maserati brought out the 2.8-liter, which was even better – it was just like the earlier model, but it had a lot more torque and power, and it was such a rigid chassis that it could handle it with no problems. But the 300S was probably the nicest sports car; a Birdcage would probably beat it, but I don’t think it ever had quite the nice ‘feel’ about it that the 300S did. I always felt that the 300S was closely related to the 250F, in terms of handling.”

Having raced so many different types of car, on so many different kinds of track, we asked about his favorites. “The Nürburgring was my absolute favorite – they held a 1,000 km race there, and I won twice in Maseratis, once in a 300S and once in a Birdcage,” Sir Stirling told us. “That race really sorted the cars out, and the Maseratis were ideally suited to the Nürburgring. The Targa Florio road race and Monaco were good, too; and while the circuits might not have been so good, I really enjoyed racing in Australia – remember, I was doing 52 races a year, and if you had a good social life, as you did in Australia, then it made up for the circuits!”

Sir Stirling, despite being in his late 70s, remains active and has an incredibly busy schedule – he is much in demand as a speaker, and to appear at all kinds of events. It was just such an appointment which brought our conversation to an end – we could have happily spent the rest of the day in his company, listening to him reminiscing about his fantastic, varied career. To close, we asked him what the name Maserati brought to mind. “When I was racing, I think it meant style and enjoyment – the better Maseratis were very rewarding to drive. The 450S was a bit of a brute, it lacked the finesse of the smaller-engined cars – but even that could be enjoyable, when you could really use the power. Today, to me, it still means the best of handling – I think that Maserati means a very nice handling car.”

We are extremely grateful that Sir Stirling found the time to meet us; the time flew by. It is still difficult to believe that we were sitting there with a true living legend – just as incredible as his ability to recall cars, and incidents, from more than fifty years ago. You can read more about Moss, his life and passion for gadgets, and the home he is having built in Florida, at his Web site.