In tennis, a common topic of debate is, "Who was the best player never to win a Grand Slam?".
In Formula One, however, the corresponding debate does not happen: there is a strong consensus that Stirling Moss is the greatest driver never to have won the Formula One World Championship. His only serious rival claimant to this dubious honour is Gilles Villeneuve, whose career was really too short to assess him completely - and, other than him, Moss is very much in a class of his own. If you look at this list of "Most race wins without ever winning the World Championship", you'll see that Stirling Moss has the most with 16, followed by David Coulthard on 13, and then Carlos Reutemann on 12. However, this becomes even more striking when you consider that Moss started far fewer races than these two did: Moss got his 16 victories from only 67 race starts, while Coulthard got 13 victories from 247 attempts, and Reutemann got 12 from 146 tries !
So, if Moss was so great, why didn't he win an F1 title? Well, when he started out in the early 1950s, he had a very strong preference for driving British cars - all of which were simply no match for the Ferraris and Maseratis of the time. Eventually, he conceded that he'd have to start racing for foreign teams if he wanted to be competitive - and, for three seasons in a row (from 1955-57), he finished runner-up to the all-conquering Juan Manuel Fangio (considered by some to be the greatest of all time). The first two of these were achieved with a Mercedes and a Maserati respectively - but in 1957, he was racing for Vanwall, who had finally produced a competitive British car. 1958 looked set to be Moss's year, as he took four victories - but, unfortunately, the Vanwall proved unreliable, and Moss finished second to Ferrari's Mike Hawthorn by only one point . The Vanwall team withdrew at the end of the year - and so, from 1959 to 1961, Moss ended up racing for Rob Walker's small privateer outfit, which didn't have the infrastructure to build its own cars, so they instead bought Coopers and Lotuses. Still, with Moss at the helm, the little team punched above its weight - with the main highlight coming in the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix, where Moss successfully held off the much more powerful shark-nosed Ferraris for 40 laps straight, to take a famous victory:
The 1962 season was looking more promising still for Moss, as the Rob Walker team was due to take delivery of one of those shark-nosed Ferraris...
Sadly, these hopes came to an instant end on at Goodwood, on Easter Monday 1962. Moss's new Ferrari hadn't yet arrived, so he instead raced an older Lotus, which suffered a gear linkage problem during the race, costing him two laps while it was repaired. Undeterred, Moss went out on a charge, to make up the lost time and try for a victory against the odds... but, sadly, there were some things that even he couldn't do. As he tried to un-lap himself, his car ran off the road, and crashed violently into a grass bank. There were doubts as to whether or not he'd live - which he did, but he was left in a coma for a month, and it took him around a year to recover physically. By then, he felt that he'd lost his racing instincts, and he opted to retire from racing.
So, what if Moss didn't have his crash, and was able to return to Formula One? A few questions to consider here:
Time to get speculating!
In Formula One, however, the corresponding debate does not happen: there is a strong consensus that Stirling Moss is the greatest driver never to have won the Formula One World Championship. His only serious rival claimant to this dubious honour is Gilles Villeneuve, whose career was really too short to assess him completely - and, other than him, Moss is very much in a class of his own. If you look at this list of "Most race wins without ever winning the World Championship", you'll see that Stirling Moss has the most with 16, followed by David Coulthard on 13, and then Carlos Reutemann on 12. However, this becomes even more striking when you consider that Moss started far fewer races than these two did: Moss got his 16 victories from only 67 race starts, while Coulthard got 13 victories from 247 attempts, and Reutemann got 12 from 146 tries !
So, if Moss was so great, why didn't he win an F1 title? Well, when he started out in the early 1950s, he had a very strong preference for driving British cars - all of which were simply no match for the Ferraris and Maseratis of the time. Eventually, he conceded that he'd have to start racing for foreign teams if he wanted to be competitive - and, for three seasons in a row (from 1955-57), he finished runner-up to the all-conquering Juan Manuel Fangio (considered by some to be the greatest of all time). The first two of these were achieved with a Mercedes and a Maserati respectively - but in 1957, he was racing for Vanwall, who had finally produced a competitive British car. 1958 looked set to be Moss's year, as he took four victories - but, unfortunately, the Vanwall proved unreliable, and Moss finished second to Ferrari's Mike Hawthorn by only one point . The Vanwall team withdrew at the end of the year - and so, from 1959 to 1961, Moss ended up racing for Rob Walker's small privateer outfit, which didn't have the infrastructure to build its own cars, so they instead bought Coopers and Lotuses. Still, with Moss at the helm, the little team punched above its weight - with the main highlight coming in the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix, where Moss successfully held off the much more powerful shark-nosed Ferraris for 40 laps straight, to take a famous victory:
The 1962 season was looking more promising still for Moss, as the Rob Walker team was due to take delivery of one of those shark-nosed Ferraris...
Sadly, these hopes came to an instant end on at Goodwood, on Easter Monday 1962. Moss's new Ferrari hadn't yet arrived, so he instead raced an older Lotus, which suffered a gear linkage problem during the race, costing him two laps while it was repaired. Undeterred, Moss went out on a charge, to make up the lost time and try for a victory against the odds... but, sadly, there were some things that even he couldn't do. As he tried to un-lap himself, his car ran off the road, and crashed violently into a grass bank. There were doubts as to whether or not he'd live - which he did, but he was left in a coma for a month, and it took him around a year to recover physically. By then, he felt that he'd lost his racing instincts, and he opted to retire from racing.
So, what if Moss didn't have his crash, and was able to return to Formula One? A few questions to consider here:
- How might Moss have done in 1962? That year, the factory-entered Ferraris didn't enter a single race, so it's hard to imagine that Moss would have won the Championship by entering a privately-entered one. Perhaps he'd have won a race of two, but over the course of the season, his Ferrari would likely have been outclassed by the BRM, Lotus and Cooper (ironically, all British cars!!!)
- Where would Moss have gone in 1963? All three of those British teams would have been attractive propositions, especially if he got beaten by them in 1962. At BRM, he could have raced alongside Graham Hill (who won the 1962 World Championship in OTL, and likely still does so in this timeline). At Lotus, he could have raced alongside Jim Clark (who dominated the 1963 championship in OTL, both because he had the best car, and because he worked very well with Lotus boss Colin Chapman). At Cooper, he could have been team-mates with Bruce McLaren (who never won a World Championship, but later founded one of the most successful and longest-lived teams in Formula One history, with 182 race victories as of 2019)
- For how long does Moss continue racing in Formula One? Although my second paragraph makes his career seem pretty long, he was only 32 years old when he had his crash in 1962, so he could easily have had at least another five years in Formula One if he wanted them: I'm guessing he doesn't retire until at least 1966 or 1967. In fact, Graham Hill (who was a few months older than Moss) didn't retire until 1975, so it's not inconceivable that Moss could have continued through the first half of the 1970s !
- Does Moss participate in any events outside Formula One? He did a lot of this while he was an F1 driver - and he won a ton of these other events. Perhaps he has a go at the Indianapolis 500? Several other British drivers did this during the 1960s (indeed, Jim Clark won the Indy 500 in 1965, and Graham Hill won it in 1966, so it's not unthinkable that Moss could do it too!)
Time to get speculating!
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