The Brian Viner Interview: Moss lives up to the racing legend

The most famous name in the history of British motor sport is still determined to win every battle

OVER THE years, there have been one or two sportsmen whose names have perfectly matched their deeds. "Eusebio!" was exactly the right exclamation to accompany a screaming 35-yard free-kick, in fact I used to wonder whether he had a brother, almost as talented, called Subbuteo. Then there was the charismatic Stirling Moss, whose name is still more synonymous with speed than those of the young pretenders Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill.

Stirling Moss. The name evokes not just an old-fashioned racing car hurtling round Monaco's hairpin bends, but an entire black-and-white era of Movietone News, sharp-nosed spivs, Lyons Corner Houses and James Robertson Justice.

I meet the legend at his mews house in Mayfair - where else would he live but Mayfair, bang in the middle of the fast lane? He has just turned 70, but is as dapper and spry as ever, and wears a pair of Bugs Bunny braces as if to remind the world that there is life in the old boy yet. Indeed, it is only four years since he last drove a Formula One car, a Tyrrell, in Japan.

"I put my foot down on the straight," he recalls, "and the kick up the backside staggered me." Much as he respects modern speeds, however, Moss believes that the tracks are not what they were. "They have all been emasculated. When they get too fast they put chicanes in or make the chicanes slower. The Abbey Curve at Silverstone was one of the most difficult. We used to take it at about 150-odd, and not more than two or three would take it without backing off. Now it is very different."

At Silverstone, in 1955, Moss became the first British driver to win the British Grand Prix. Four years later he repeated the achievement, lapping the entire field in the rain, but he can barely recall that race. He remembers the 1955 event, he says, "because I still don't know whether I won it or whether Fangio eased off and let me."

Moss and the great Argentinian driver Juan Manuel Fangio, five times world champion, both raced for Mercedes-Benz. "We came round the last corner nose to tail and I pulled right over and waved him past. I had my foot flat to the floor but he had a quicker car. He didn't pass, though, and I asked him later whether he let me win, because it would be good PR for Mercedes if an Englishman won the British Grand Prix. He said not. There was a book which alleged that Fangio was told it would be nice if I won, but Mercedes weren't like that, really".

Fangio, insists Moss, was the greatest driver of all time. They were good friends, even though they communicated principally with their hands. "We talked about cars and crumpet... what else is there? But there were things you just didn't do. I wanted to ask him about the Antoniusbrucke corner at Nurburgring, whether he ever took it flat, but it is a man's copyright, the way he drives. It wasn't done to ask. I did ask him years later, and he replied `solo una volta' - only one time - then gestured with his fingers to show his backside contracting." Moss roars with laughter.

If he is unsure whether or not he beat Fangio fair and square in the 1955 British Grand Prix, he can at least be satisfied that he left the Argentinian for dead in the same year's Mille Miglia, the extraordinarily gruelling, 800-car, 1,000-mile road race round Italy. Moss took his Mercedes 300SLR up to 178mph - "You knew it was fast," he says, "when you started passing twin-engined aircraft" - and beat Fangio by 28 minutes. "I could usually beat him in sports cars," says Moss, adding: "It's for others to say whether I was one of the greats, but I do think that I was perhaps the most versatile."

His immodesty is supported by the statistics. He drove 84 makes of car to 222 victories in 506 races, and by 1961 was the highest-paid driver in the world, earning pounds 32,750. That equates to around pounds 500,000 today, a snip alongside the riches paid to the likes of Michael Schumacher. At the time, however, it roughly matched the earnings of a top barrister, which for some reason is Moss's favourite point of comparison. And, in the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix, he showed why he was paid so handsomely. "That was my most memorable race. It was 100 laps in those days, and I took the lead on the 86th lap, driving a Lotus which was outpowered by the Ferraris. I never had more than a four-second lead and I could see them behind me at every hairpin bend, but I went flat out, and if I'd done all 100 laps in pole position time I would only have been 40 seconds quicker, which gives some idea how hard I was trying." Indeed.

Of all the cars he drove, I wonder, which did he cherish the most? "Just as you would take a different girl to bed than you would take to a first night, it all depended on the race," he says. "At Nurburgring, you wanted a responsive car. The Maserati 250F was best, but it wasn't reliable. The Mercedes was more reliable, but it wasn't easy. The Aston Martin DBR1 was terrific, but the gearbox was a real sod. The Porsche was a fantastic car for throwing round, but it wouldn't shine on an uninteresting circuit like Le Mans. And the Lotus was better than the Cooper, but the wheels would fall off, so one's love of it was pretty restricted." Another huge laugh. "I had a wheel come off at Spa at 140mph. Again, it was like being with a girl, and catching VD. Now it would be Aids, I suppose."

Moss's conversation is littered with sexual metaphors and references to "crumpet", lending him a kind of raffish, Leslie Phillips air, which perfectly fits his image as an embodiment of the 1950s and 60s. Moreover, his reputation as one of the most heroically dashing of British sportsmen is somehow reinforced, not diminished, by the fact that he never won the World Championship. As he says - as I suppose he would - the World Championship "spoils racing in some ways. I have seen drivers trying to come fourth because they will win the title, instead of trying to win the race." That emphatically was not his way.

Predictably, Moss regrets the decline of good manners generally, rather enigmatically citing the failure of men these days to take their hats off in lifts. More specifically, he laments the demise of an unwritten code of honour among drivers. "It is not uncommon for one driver to punt another off. Only stock cars did that in the 50s." Nevertheless, he has great respect for one of the sport's principal miscreants. "I can see what Schumacher is about and where he's coming from. I think Mikka Hakkinen has done a tremendous job. I admire David Coulthard. I find Eddie Irvine a bit arrogant and am not his greatest fan, but he's put in some tremendous drives."

And what, on the eve of his last British Gand Prix, of Damon Hill, son of his old adversary Graham? "Damon certainly has the ability of his father and probably a bit more. I don't think Damon is one of the greats, and his father wasn't either, but he drives bloody well. You can't really compare the two of them. Graham Hill did an amazing job for racing. When he won at Indianapolis, and said he'd like to make an award to the first American home, that was marvellous. Americans had never lost there before."

In 1925, Moss's father had also competed in the Indianapolis 500, finishing a creditable 11th. He was a keen amateur driver, and gave his son an Austin Seven to drive about the family farm when young Stirling was 10, but was implacably opposed to the boy becoming a racing driver. He lived, however, to contentedly eat his words. Moss recorded the first of his 222 wins in his first race, at the inaugural Goodwood meeting in September 1948.

Eerily, it was back at Goodwood 14 years later - in a Lotus Climax, of all cars - that his career came to an abrupt end, and with it, very nearly, his life. Desperately trying to catch Graham Hill, he came out of the Fordwater bend at more than 100mph and crashed into an earth bank. He lay in a coma for 32 days, and his right side remained paralysed for months afterwards. As I leave, he shows me the scrapbook - one of 96 that he has meticulously assembled - devoted to the crash. It was the front- page splash in most national newspapers - indeed Moss, his cars and his crumpet were very often front-page news.

"No race I drove in was ever reported as sport," he explains. "Along with yachting and polo, motor racing did not feature on the sports pages. It was always on page one if someone died, or otherwise page three or four. Later in the 60s, that changed. But it helped to make me a household name. Also, at a time when patriotism counted, I was always keen to drive British cars. People liked that. And I was lucky that my name was Stirling, because my mother wanted to call me Hamish."

By the time Moss recovered from his near-fatal injuries, his fame had burgeoned even more. But he still had to find a new living, and considered becoming an estate agent, or even an MP, "which, for someone who knew nothing about anything, seemed a pretty good way to go". Instead, he traded profitably on his name and reputation, as he continues to do to this day, and it is a source of wonder to him that he can now earn more from signing 100 limited-edition prints than he did in his most lucrative year as a racing driver. "Not index-linked, of course, but even so, it's remarkable, don't you think?"

After the crash, it was three years before he regained perfect balance. There was no question of him driving competitively, although he occasionally does so again now, in vintage racing cars. In fact, he is waging a battle with the motor-racing establishment to be allowed to wear the 1950s gear rather than the modern fireproof suits required by the insurance companies. I have a feeling that he will win his battle, if only because, even now, Stirling Moss absolutely hates to lose.