Stirling Moss, the British racing driver who ranked as one of the all-time Formula One greats despite never winning the world championship, died yesterday at the age of 90 after a long illness.
“He died as he lived, looking wonderful,” his wife Susie told the Daily Mail newspaper.
“He simply tired in the end and he just closed his beautiful eyes and that was that.”
A teammate at Mercedes to Argentine five-times world champion Juan Manuel Fangio, the Briton survived one of the deadliest eras of motorsport with 16 grand prix wins in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Four times a championship runner-up, and also third overall on three occasions, no other driver has won as many races without taking the title.
Moss was also the first Briton to win his home grand prix, beating Fangio at Liverpool’s Aintree circuit for Mercedes in 1955, with his name becoming a byword for speed for a generation of fans.
News of his passing was mourned across the world of motorsport, with Formula One hailing a ‘legend’ and ‘one of the true greats’.
“A prodigious competitor, supremely talented racer, and consummate gentleman, he leaves an indelible mark of greatness on the history of international motorsport,” said McLaren offering their condolences.
Former racer and television commentator Martin Brundle hailed “a mighty racer and gentleman”.
But for his sense of sportsmanship, Moss could have been Britain’s first ever world champion in 1958 instead of Mike Hawthorn.
He lost the title by a single point that year after asking stewards to reinstate his disqualified compatriot at the Portuguese Grand Prix.
“I felt that it was quite wrong and I went and gave evidence on Mike’s behalf and said no way should he be disqualified,” Moss, who won four races that year to Hawthorn’s one, told Reuters in an interview at his home in 2009.
Moss ended his professional career after an accident at Goodwood in 1962 left him unconscious for a month and paralysed for six months.
Knighted Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss in 2000 for services to motor racing, the London-born dentist’s son retired from all forms of motor racing only in 2011 when he was 81.
He regarded the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix as his greatest Formula One race but the 1955 Mille Miglia, a sportscar race on Italian public roads, was as memorable.
He covered the last stage, some 83 miles from Cremona to Brescia, at an average speed of 165.1 miles per hour from a standing start.
Moss was taken ill in Singapore in late 2016 and spent 134 days in hospital battling a chest infection.
He also survived a three-storey plunge down a lift shaft at his London home in March 2010, breaking both ankles and four bones in his feet.




Moss files

Born: Sept. 17, 1929 in London
Died: April 12, 2020
Racing career: 1948 to 1962
Races entered: 529 (67 in Formula One)
Races won: 212
Formula One Grands Prix won: 16 (24 podiums)
F1 Teams: Mercedez-Benz, Maserati, Vanwall, Rob Walker Cooper, Lotus, HWM


NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS
 * Second place in F1 drivers championship four times, third overall on three other occasions.
* First British driver to win a home Grand Prix in 1955 at Aintree.
* Won the 1955 Mille Miglia — Italy’s 1,000-mile endurance race — in a record time of little over 10 hours, beating then-Mercedes teammate Juan Manuel Fangio by nearly 33 minutes.
* Nearly became the first British driver to win the F1 world championship in 1958 but lost by one point after sportingly asking Portuguese Grand Prix stewards to reinstate compatriot Mike Hawthorn who had been disqualified.
* Awarded the BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1961.
* Inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1990.
* Knighted for his services to motor racing in 2000.
* Received the FIA gold medal in 2006 for his outstanding contribution to motorsport, where he joked: “This is the first FIA award I’ve ever won.”