Remembering the last driver to transcend his sport

"Rest in peace, racer," was how Mario Andretti signed off his message of condolence, and nothing would have pleased Stirling Moss more. For one thing, he saw Mario as a kindred spirit more than anyone else; for another, he would have seen his words as an ultimate accolade.

"It was easy," said Moss, "for me to understand how Mario went on racing as long as he did, however much he had in the bank. That man was a racer, like Gilles Villeneuve was a racer. And like I was, I think..." For all his artistry, his countless victories, it was on this that he most prided himself.

Now, with the news of his death not unexpected but still raw, as well as losing a loyal and generous friend, I feel that the last of my gods is gone. If ever a racing driver transcended his sport, it was Stirling.

He had always counted himself lucky, he told me once, to have had ability enough to make a living from motor racing. "God, think about it - otherwise I'd have had to work! And that, of course, was the problem I had to face after the Goodwood shunt, when I was 32 years old. I mean, what do you do when you know nothing about anything - apart from become an MP or an estate agent?"

If he never quite got over being ripped from the sport he so much loved, he was still able to make a good living simply out of being Stirling Moss. No name was ever more synonymous with a sport, and public affection for him never wavered.

Predictably just about all the obituaries trotted out the old cliche that he was 'the greatest driver never to win the world championship', but in my eyes that diminishes only the worth of the title: I have always thought Stirling the greatest who ever lived.

Enzo Ferrari thought similar, suggesting that he alone belonged with Tazio Nuvolari, the legendary Italian racer on two and four wheels in the 1920s and 1930s until the second world war halted his career.

"If Moss had put reason before passion," Ferrari said, "he would have been world champion many times," and that was undeniable - but then he wouldn't have been Stirling Moss. Part of the attraction of driving, in his later years, for Rob Walker was the frisson of beating the factory teams as a privateer.

It doesn't often happen that a generation of drivers willingly allows that one of their number is consummately the best, but all his rivals felt that about Moss.

In his pomp - which he was to the end of his career - Moss's driving was essentially without flaw

Yes, there were the iconic victories for Mercedes, Maserati, Vanwall, Cooper and Lotus in grands prix and again Mercedes plus Aston Martin and Jaguar in sports car races, but - as was the way of it back then - Stirling raced something virtually every weekend of the season, invariably the class of the field.

In appalling conditions at Silverstone in 1961, he won the Daily Express Trophy, lapping everyone, including runner-up Jack Brabham. "Oh, second's not too bad," Brabham smiled. "I'd be more upset if I'd been beaten by a human."

Unless you were around at the time, it is impossible to appreciate just how much Moss was motor racing in Britain back then. While there were fellow countrymen - Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins, particularly Tony Brooks - of great ability, none captured the public imagination like Stirling and I would venture none has since. A childhood memory
of the warm-up lap for a Gold Cup at Oulton Park: past the cars came - and then someone shouted: "Here he is!" No elaboration was required.

In his pomp - which he was to the end of his career - Moss's driving was essentially without flaw. Wet or dry, fast circuit or slow, it didn't matter, and it was the same with cars. When John Cooper and then Colin Chapman revolutionised F1, Moss effortlessly adapted: in 1956 he won at Monaco in a Maserati 250F, and four years later did it again in a Lotus 18.

On the day of his last accident, at Goodwood in 1962 - unexplained presumably forever - he was laps behind after a pitstop, but going flat out because there was still a lap record to be broken, still something to be got from the day, still spectators to enrapture. For days, his fight for life was the first item on the news.

More than anyone I ever saw, Stirling personified 'racing driver', but even with charisma to throw away, he was fundamentally a shy man, never finding it easy to make a speech, even to enter a crowded room in which all would instantly recognise him.

"I'm much more extrovert than I was," he said a few years ago. "For some reason I always lacked confidence - although in a car I was as confident as hell. The race was no problem, and neither was going up to get an award at prizegiving - but I'd worry if I actually had to say something..."

There was a purity in the way Moss went racing. If he was fortunate in anything, it was that in those simpler times a great driver could compensate for an average car. Like most of his contemporaries, he had no great mechanical knowledge: if a car wasn't handling well, he simply drove around the problems.

As well as that, Stirling was also quintessentially a sportsman, a quality highly valued back in the day. Thanks to the scoring system of the time, he famously lost the 1958 world championship by a point to Hawthorn, despite winning four grands prix to Mike's one.

Less remembered is that had Stirling not voluntarily gone to the stewards at Oporto, and spoken in his rival's defence, Hawthorn would have been disqualified. My suggestion that he'd been remarkably selfless left Moss bemused: "What else could I have done?"

While Moss's most fabled victory is perhaps the Mille Miglia in 1955, he was at his very greatest in 1961, his last full season; genius at Monaco and the Nurburgring allowing him to beat the more powerful Ferraris in Walker's obsolete Lotus. No one else beat them all year long.

"Stirling was the perfect racing driver. When he was driving for me, I always felt that anything was possible, because he was so much better than all the others. It wasn't fair" Rob Walker

The Monaco win came after what Moss considered his greatest drive, and with good reason. Over the 100 laps, his average lap time was 1m 39.5s, only four-tenths shy of his pole position time, and that always takes a little believing.

Conjure a blend of the ease of Alain Prost and the commitment of Ayrton Senna, and an image of Moss at his zenith comes into focus.

"For me," said Rob Walker, "Stirling was the perfect racing driver. When he was driving for me, I always felt that anything was possible, because he was so much better than all the others. It wasn't fair, really..."

'Mr Motor Racing' was the headline on Autosport's report of Monaco '61. That he was, and that, for me, he will always be.