Rivals and friends The men he raced, and what they made of one another

At first Hawthorn’s career ran ahead of Moss’s. Ferrari signed him for 1953, and that July at Reims-Gueux he beat Fangio by a second to win the French Grand Prix, while Moss’s Cooper retired; in 1954 he won the Spanish Grand Prix at Pedralbes. Moss was still in British cars, and then his own Maserati 250F, and in their first 14 races together, from Spa in 1952 to the end of 1954, Hawthorn finished ahead 12 times.

They were never team-⁠mates. When Moss went to Mercedes-⁠Benz for 1955, Hawthorn took his place at Jaguar, and that September, in the Tourist Trophy at Dundrod, both drove on through the smoke of the accident on the second lap in which two drivers were killed. That year the balance swung: from 1955 to 1957 Moss finished ahead nine times to Hawthorn’s four.

1958

In 1958 the title lay between them. Moss won four Grands Prix, in Argentina, the Netherlands, Portugal and Morocco, to Hawthorn’s one, at Reims; but Hawthorn scored in nine races of the ten, and Moss’s Vanwall failed him at Monaco, at Spa and at Silverstone, then at the Nürburgring and Monza. As David Tremayne summed it up in his long interview with Moss in 1994, Hawthorn’s Ferrari was inferior to the Vanwall in many ways, but not in reliability. Of their ten races that year, Hawthorn finished ahead in six.

But it’s a case of what winning means to you.

At Boavista, in Oporto, on 24 August, the title turned on Moss’s word. Hawthorn, 2nd, was disqualified for restarting on the footpath after Moss had taken the flag; that night Moss told the stewards that no one had been endangered, and Hawthorn’s 2nd place was restored, with 6 points and a seventh for the fastest lap. Without them he would have finished the year on 39, and Moss would have been champion. The race is told in full in 1958.

How Moss told it changed over the years, as The sportsman follows; what never shifted was the decision itself, and his view that it had been the right one.

Whether they were friends depends on who is asked. Moss, in 1994, called Hawthorn a good friend of his as well as a competitor; Nigel Roebuck, who wrote about them both, thought them never great friends, their characters too far apart. Hawthorn’s close friend at Ferrari was Collins. After Casablanca they flew home on different aircraft: Moss had found a quicker and cheaper charter, while Hawthorn took a seat in the Viscount that Tony Vandervell had hired, which also carried the badly burned Stuart Lewis-Evans. Hawthorn gave up racing at once. On 22 January 1959 he was killed in a road accident near Guildford, at 29.

Collins was two years younger, and the two of them had raced each other in 500cc cars from 1950. It was Ken Gregory who put him forward as Moss’s partner in the Targa Florio of October 1955, the race that made Mercedes-⁠Benz world sports-car champions, and who then became his manager too. Gregory found him charmingly vague, and quite unlike Moss, who always arrived on time. In July 1956 the two of them were 2nd at Le Mans, sharing an Aston Martin DB3S.

Mike and Peter were both bloody good, although I wouldn’t rate either with Tony [Brooks]. Of the two, on his day Mike was definitely quicker, I think – but then Mike didn’t have that many days. Overall I’d put Pete ahead – about equal with Jean Behra. Put it this way: if I had to choose a co-driver for the ‘Ring, Peter would be on a very short list. He was also very good company.

In Grands Prix Collins drove for Ferrari from 1956, and in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza that September he handed his car to Fangio in the race, giving up his own slim chance of the title; Moss won, and Collins finished the year 3rd, 2 points behind him.

On 19 July 1958 Collins won the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, leading from the first lap, with Moss chasing him until the Vanwall’s engine broke. A fortnight later, on 3 August at the Nürburgring, Moss led and set a lap record on his third lap before the magneto failed on his fourth. Collins, chasing Brooks, crashed at the Pflanzgarten; he died of his injuries. He was 26.

Brooks was a dental student when he won the Syracuse Grand Prix for Connaught in 1955. At Vanwall he signed as the number two and accepted it. At Aintree on 20 July 1957 he was still weak from a crash at Le Mans nearly four weeks earlier, and started on the understanding that his car would be Moss’s if it was needed. It was: Moss’s own car faltered, Brooks was called in and had to be helped from the cockpit, and Moss drove his Vanwall to a British car’s first win in the World Championship, a win the two of them shared. The race is in 1957.

In 1958 each of them won three Grands Prix for Vanwall, and in September, sharing an Aston Martin DBR1, they won the Tourist Trophy at Goodwood. As team-⁠mates Moss finished ahead eight times to Brooks’s five, with Aintree shared. Brooks remembered a team without friction, and a team-⁠mate who never gave him cause to complain. “You know we were team-⁠mates at Aston Martin and Vanwall and then friends for decades thereafter. And in all that time, we’ve never had an argument. How many team-⁠mates can say that?”

In 1959, in a Ferrari, Brooks went to the last race at Sebring with a chance of the title, made a precautionary stop and finished 3rd; Brabham was champion, Brooks 2nd and Moss 3rd. Moss thought he should have won it. “Tony was a far better driver than many who won a world championship, he was the greatest unknown racing driver there’s ever been, he should have won the title in 1959 with Ferrari.” (attributed) Denis Jenkinson, who judged drivers more coolly, rated Brooks a little below Moss and well above Hawthorn and Collins.

For Brooks’s autobiography Moss picked a team of his own: “If I had a team I’d put Tony Brooks in at No1 with Jim Clark alongside him” (attributed). Brooks died on 3 May 2022, at 90.

In 1959 Moss raced Walker’s Cooper T51, and in two races the British Racing Partnership’s BRM, against Brabham in the same make of car from the factory. Three times Moss’s transmission broke while he was leading, and Brabham finished ahead six times to two. In 1960 Moss moved to a Lotus and won at Monaco, until a crash in practice at Spa put him out for two months, and Brabham took his second title.

In October 1960 Sports Illustrated weighed the two men up. By the magazine’s account even Brabham allowed that Moss was a shade the quicker. Moss saw in Brabham a calculating driver, never upset, who ran a race only as fast as it needed, and owned that he himself was the more temperamental of the two, though not at the wheel. Roy Salvadori, who raced them both, thought Moss the quicker round any circuit, but would have taken Brabham for a whole season. In his own book, as the magazine quoted it, Brabham put Moss above Fangio.

In 1961, the last full season, Moss finished ahead of him seven times in eight. In 1976, 15 years later, they shared a car, a Holden Torana, at Bathurst. Brabham died on 19 May 2014.

At Monaco in May 1961 Clark, in the new works Lotus, started beside Moss on the front row. Moss won, in Walker’s year-old car, and told Walker afterwards that they could not go on with it much longer: this was not yet the Clark he became, but Moss could see him coming. On 26 December that year, in the South African Grand Prix, a race outside the championship, Clark beat him, both of them in Lotus 21s. Four months later came the crash at Goodwood.

Asked in 1994 to set Clark beside Fangio and Ayrton Senna, the two he ranked highest, Moss said:

I think it is terribly difficult to compare across eras, and I can only speak truly about people I have raced against. I think that Ayrton was of the same stature. I think he was tremendous. He is the only other person. Jimmy Clark was not, in my mind, in the class of those two. He was just one down. Of course, when I raced against Jimmy I could beat him, but then he was coming up and then I stopped, so. . .

So the comparison was left to others. John Surtees thought that over a single lap in the same car there would have been nothing in it, but that Moss was more of a racer, and the quicker in the wet. Clark’s mentor, Ian Scott-Watson, believed Clark would have overhauled him; Ken Gregory believed Clark would have been less of a force against a Moss in Walker-run Ferraris. Moss himself, in 2009, thought that by the time he could have come back Clark had made himself the best, and might have been very hard to beat.

Off the track there was a gentler link: Moss once tried to pair Clark with his secretary, as The people around him tells. Clark died on 7 April 1968, at 32.

Hill had a hand in the title Moss lost by a point. At Ain-Diab in October 1958, running 2nd behind Moss in a Ferrari, he was signalled by his pit to ease off and let Hawthorn through, and Hawthorn’s 2nd place made him champion. In the next three seasons Hill was ahead in 1959 and 1961, Moss in 1960.

At Monaco on 14 May 1961 Hill and Richie Ginther hunted Moss’s Lotus for nearly 3 hours. Hill, worn out and getting nowhere, obeyed a signal from his pit to let Ginther through, and finished 3rd. At the Nürburgring in August he and von Trips chased Moss again, and in the rain at the end the two Ferraris spun together; Moss won, von Trips was 2nd and Hill 3rd. Hill won the title at Monza in September, in the race in which von Trips was killed.

Hill died on 28 August 2008. Moss sent his tribute by email.

In 1961 von Trips won the Dutch and British Grands Prix. At Aintree, in torrential rain, Moss kept with him in the Lotus until a brake pipe broke; at the Nürburgring three weeks later the order was reversed, Moss 1st and von Trips 2nd, in front of a German crowd.

On 10 September 1961, on the second lap of the Italian Grand Prix, von Trips’s Ferrari and Clark’s Lotus collided, and the Ferrari left the road into the fence where the spectators stood. Von Trips was killed, and 14 spectators with him. Moss, in a works Lotus lent to him by Innes Ireland, retired with a broken wheel bearing; Phil Hill won the race and the championship. The season is told in 1961.