1954 A Maserati of his own, painted green, and then red for the works team

A car of his own

Nothing was signed in Modena until two in the morning. First Ken Gregory had to persuade Maserati to move the throttle of the Maserati 250F he was buying from the middle of the pedals to the right; then, at three o’clock, he telephoned Alfred Moss to say that he had bought the car, and that the family would now have to help him find the money.

Gregory was Stirling Moss’s manager, and the British cars Moss had driven in Grands Prix had run out. No British car existed for the new 2½-litre Formula One. Gregory had tried Mercedes-⁠Benz first, and Alfred Neubauer, its racing manager, had turned him down. Maserati already had three Argentine drivers, and Argentina was a big market for its cars, so it would sell Moss a car but not give him a place in its team. The money came from his parents, from his sister Pat and from Shell-Mex BP.

What the car cost depends on who tells it. Gregory remembered agreeing 9 million lire, £5,100; Moss, in 1994, about 5.6 million lire, a little over £3,700; The Guardian’s obituary gave £5,500.

It was chassis 2508, a new car of the latest type, with the multi-tube frame, the longer wheelbase, the de Dion rear axle and the lower build, on Pirelli tyres, and he had it painted a pale green of his own. Maserati had promised him a car the same as the factory’s. When Alf Francis, his mechanic, asked the man doing the bodywork to let Moss sit with straight arms and was refused, Moss remembered, “So Alf stayed on that night and cut the chassis and rewelded it!” The bodywork went on over it the next day.

Bordeaux, Silverstone and Aintree

He first raced it at Bordeaux on 9 May, a few days after taking delivery. From the third row of the grid he treated the wet race as a lesson in a car that was entirely new to him, stopped for tyres of a different pattern, and then, as the road dried, went faster and faster to the crowd’s delight; he was 4th. For once, wrote Denis Jenkinson, who reported the races abroad for Motor Sport, he had finished a Grand Prix without mechanical trouble.

At Silverstone on 15 May, in the International Trophy, he was 2nd to José Froilán González’s Ferrari when a de Dion tube broke at Club Corner on lap 21 and splayed the rear wheels. He won the 500cc race at the same meeting in Francis Beart’s Cooper.

Two weeks later he won for the first time in the Maserati, in the Aintree 200, a Formula Libre race at Aintree, on 29 May. In the rain Peter Collins, in the Thinwall Ferrari, led and drew away, while Moss drove calmly in 2nd place and closed on him lap by lap; when the Ferrari began to misfire and stopped for new plugs, Moss went by, and he won at 77.7 mph (125.0 km/⁠h) without stopping for fuel. In his speech he hoped one day to win in a British car, and Motor Sport kept two phrases of it in his own words: “green car … merely painted green”. For the lap of honour he rode in a British car after all, in the back of a Rolls-Bentley tourer, holding the Daily Telegraph trophy, and the Maserati mechanics smiled, very slightly.

The first points

His first World Championship race in the 250F was the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-⁠Francorchamps on 20 June. In practice he was unhappy with the oil flying about, and he started 9th. With no spare engine to hand he dared not use the 8,000 rpm that Onofre Marimón and Juan Manuel Fangio were using, and he drove steadily in the middle of the field, rising as others dropped out. For the last part of the race he had no oil pressure at all, and the Italians did not know it: he drove on with his fingers crossed and finished 3rd, a lap behind Fangio. They were the first points he had scored in the championship, and his first podium finish.

On 17 July, in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, he started on the front row with Fangio, González and Mike Hawthorn. He passed Hawthorn, and the two changed places for 20 laps until, in the rain, Moss drew away; then he passed Fangio’s struggling Mercedes-⁠Benz, and the crowd cheered him into 2nd place. He was 24 seconds behind González’s Ferrari and 26 ahead of Hawthorn’s when, 10 laps from the end, the rear axle failed. Seven drivers were timed at the same fastest lap, 1:50, and each was credited with 1/7 of a point.

A week later, at Caen, he led Maurice Trintignant’s Ferrari from the start and set a lap record. A shower at 40 laps made him ease off; Trintignant outbraked him at the hairpin on lap 46, Moss took the lead back on lap 53, and Trintignant passed again at the same hairpin to win by 3 seconds. Jenkinson thought that what Moss had done to Hawthorn at Silverstone and to Trintignant at Caen should convince even the greatest disbelievers that his ability had been wasted for many years.

Red, with a green nose

At the Nürburgring, before the German Grand Prix of 1 August, he agreed after some persuasion to accept the factory’s support. The condition was that the car be painted red; Maserati let him keep a green nose, though the two colours clashed, and gave him new engine parts. Motor Sport suspected that the factory had seen how a green Maserati in front of its own red ones looked. In practice Marimón, Maserati’s leading driver, was killed before the Wehrseifen bridge. Moss started 3rd, on the front row, and ran 3rd on the opening lap behind González and Fangio, comfortably; he was credited with 1 lap, and stopped halfway round lap 2. Why is told three ways: a wheel bearing in the databases, the transmission in grandprix.com’s report, and a broken big end that wrecked the engine in Motor Sport’s.

The next day he flew back from Düsseldorf, started a 500cc heat at Brands Hatch from the back row without a practice lap, and was 2nd in the final to Jim Russell. On 7 August, at Oulton Park, he won his first Formula One race. Not having practised, he started the International Gold Cup from the back of the grid, in the works Maserati that Luigi Villoresi was to have driven at the Nürburgring rather than his own; by lap 4 he was leading, waving his thanks as slower drivers made room. He won the Formula Libre race and the 500cc race at the meeting as well.

At Pescara, in a race outside the championship on 15 August, the car came out in a new coat of red with a green band round the air intake. In practice he lapped the long road circuit in 10:23, a faster average than anyone had managed there before, Varzi’s Auto Union of 1936 included. In the race he led by 30 seconds until a gearbox oil pipe broke on lap 4.

From the Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten on 22 August he was an official works entry and the team’s mainstay, with three other cars he could call on and a reserve built with his throttle on the right. He started 3rd, on the front row, and was the fastest of all in a wet second session that did not count. He passed González for 2nd but could not hold Fangio, and his oil pressure failed after 21 laps.

Monza, and the end of the season

At Monza he was Maserati’s number one. A quarter of an hour before the end of practice he lapped in 1:59.3, seemingly at ease, and on the last lap of the session Alberto Ascari beat it by a tenth of a second: the front row was Fangio, Ascari and Moss.

In the Italian Grand Prix the order changed lap by lap among Ascari, Fangio, González and Moss, and at 20 laps Moss was 10 seconds behind, so plainly watching and waiting that Motor Sport was amused. At half-distance his team-⁠mate Villoresi came past. Moss saw no sense in racing his own team-⁠mate and eased back, and Villoresi’s clutch broke on lap 43. Then Moss went after the leaders. He passed Fangio, and on lap 45 Ascari, and he led the Italian Grand Prix with two World Champions close behind him. Ascari took the lead back for 2 laps before his engine dropped a valve on lap 49.

By lap 60 Moss was 15 seconds ahead, and later 20. On lap 68 of 80 his oil pressure began to fall in the corners: the pipe that drew oil from the tank in the tail had cracked at its flange and was sucking in air. His pit poured oil in, almost too quickly, and Fangio went by; oil streamed from the back of the Maserati, and Hawthorn waved frantically at Moss’s pit. In the end Moss got out and pushed the wrecked car to within a few feet of the finishing line and sat there while Fangio’s Mercedes-⁠Benz finished the race. Jenkinson, reporting for Motor Sport, watched him: “Most people would have torn their hair out and screamed blue murder, but Moss drank his Coca-Cola and was satisfied that at least he had shaken the opposition in no mean manner.”

Seconds ahead when the oil pipe cracked

20

Place, after pushing the car over the line

10

When the race was over he pushed the Maserati across the line and was classified 10th, 9 laps down. Neubauer, Motor Sport later wrote, was impressed. Jenkinson gave the race to him on every count but the result:

In England that autumn the Maserati won again. On 25 September he took the Goodwood Trophy from pole with the fastest lap, and on 2 October, at Aintree, the Daily Telegraph Trophy and the Formula Libre race, with a lap record for the circuit run clockwise of 2:00.6, 89.55 mph (144.12 km/⁠h); in Beart’s Cooper he won the 500cc race there as well.

The season ended at Pedralbes, in Barcelona, on 24 October. His own car was not ready and he drove the latest works car, whose pedals were the other way round from his own; sorting out a spin in practice, he stood on the throttle instead of the brake. From the second row he passed Fangio for 4th before the oil-scavenge pump failed, and Hawthorn won for Ferrari. In six championship races Moss had finished only one under his own power. His 4 1/7 points put him 13th, level with Marimón, and Fangio was champion with 42.¹

Sebring, Jaguar and the Alps

His racing year had begun in a much smaller car: on 7 March, at Sebring, he shared Briggs Cunningham’s 1,452cc OSCA MT4 with Bill Lloyd in the 12 Hours, against the Lancia works team, the favourites, and a slipping clutch. Piero Taruffi’s Lancia led comfortably with the OSCA 2nd until, near the end, it failed; Taruffi’s co-driver, Manzon, pushed it over the line, and it was disqualified on Donald Healey’s protest. Moss and Lloyd won, on distance and on index. Motor Sport added a line: “Incidentally, this was Stirling’s first appearance in a non-English car.”

It was his last season in the Jaguar works team, and the new D-⁠type gave him little. At Le Mans in June, with Peter Walker, its brakes failed; practice had been a warning: “We went up the escape road at Mulsanne as many times as we went round the corner during practice at Le Mans in 1954.” In the 12 Hours at Reims-Gueux, which started at midnight on the night of 3–⁠4 July, he led from the first lap and had lapped the whole field within an hour and 40 minutes; after a plug change Walker took over, and soon after half past four in the morning a universal joint in the propeller shaft broke. In the Tourist Trophy at Dundrod on 11 September the car lost its oil pressure and hit a bank, and Moss stopped short of the line and pushed it over, as he had at Monza six days before.²

In July, with John Cutts beside him in a Sunbeam Alpine, he went through the Alpine Rally without penalty for the third year running and took the Coupe d’Or (see Rallies and records). In Formula Three, in Francis Beart’s Cooper, he won twice at Silverstone, twice at Aintree and once at Oulton Park before giving up the class.

An offer from Stuttgart

In November Daimler-Benz cabled Gregory to ask, without commitment, whether Moss was already bound for 1955. Moss’s first answer was no: his contract with Shell-Mex BP ran through 1955, and Mercedes-⁠Benz used Castrol. Gregory went to Stuttgart all the same, was offered more than he had dared to ask, and asked Neubauer to pair Moss with Fangio in the 300 SLR sports cars. Moss’s diary for 22 November: “Up early, called on Jaguars, then to Rootes, where Ken called and told me of the fantastic Merc offer. Wow!” (attributed)

On 4 December Moss tried the Mercedes-⁠Benz W196 at Hockenheim. Gregory remembered:

What Moss remembered afterwards was something else:

Alf Francis would not follow him to Mercedes-⁠Benz: he disliked Germans. Moss signed. Shell-Mex BP released him, and Omer Orsi of Maserati cabled a claim to a contract, which Alfred Moss and Gregory denied. In 1955 he would be Fangio’s team-⁠mate.