1956 Maserati’s team leader, and runner-⁠up to Fangio for the second year

The team leader’s pedals

At Spa in June Motor Sport counted six Maseratis in the factory’s care and found that three of them had the accelerator to the right of the brake. They were for the team leader, Stirling Moss, who could drive no other way, and one of the three was Cesare Perdisa’s, so that Moss could take it over if his own car broke. Twice that summer he did.

With Mercedes-⁠Benz gone from racing, he went back to Maserati as the leader of its works team, with Nello Ugolini as team manager and Jean Behra as his team-⁠mate in every championship Grand Prix. The car was the Maserati 250F, on Pirelli tyres. Nearly 40 years later he still spoke warmly of the car and of its mechanics.

He began the year in the southern summer. On 7 January, at Ardmore, he won the New Zealand Grand Prix in his own 1954 Maserati, despite a stop for a fuel leak, and a sports-car race the same day in a Porsche 550. In Argentina on 22 January, at the Buenos Aires Autodrome, the Grand Prix was his first race as Maserati’s team leader. His car rolled over his foot before the start; he ran 2nd until the engine failed after 81 laps, trailing oil. A week later he and Carlos Menditeguy won the Buenos Aires 1000 km in a Maserati 300S.

The spring in England was a run of wins. At Goodwood on Easter Monday, 2 April, he won the Glover Trophy in a works 250F with fuel injection, after Archie Scott Brown’s Connaught had led for 16 of its 32 laps, and set a lap record; the same day he won the sports-car race in an Aston Martin DB3S. He took the British Empire Trophy at Oulton Park on 14 April in a Cooper, and the Aintree 200 at Aintree in his own Maserati a week later. In the Mille Miglia on 29 April he and Denis Jenkinson, together again, crashed out in a Maserati 350S; neither was hurt.

On 5 May his own Maserati was withdrawn from the International Trophy at Silverstone so that he could drive a Vanwall in Maurice Trintignant’s place. He equalled Mike Hawthorn’s new lap record of 102.30 mph (164.64 km/⁠h) 14 times, averaged more over the 180 miles than the old outright lap record, and won by a lap from Scott Brown.

Monaco, 13 May

In practice at Monaco he beat Juan Manuel Fangio’s best of the moment with 1:46.2 in a carburettor car, and then, just before six in the evening, remembered the £100 prize for the fastest lap of practice. He borrowed Horace Gould’s private Maserati to drive round to the team’s garage, fetched his faster car, had its plugs changed, and could not beat Fangio’s 1:44.2. Fangio, now in a Lancia-Ferrari, took pole, with Moss beside him and Eugenio Castellotti 3rd.

Moss was first into the hairpin and came out of the tunnel on the first lap well clear, the Maserati in a controlled power slide. Behind him Fangio spun at Ste Dévote on lap 2, and Luigi Musso and Harry Schell were put out; Fangio hit the walls twice, handed his car to Castellotti on lap 40 and took over Peter Collins’s on lap 54, 50 seconds behind the leader. Among the drivers’ faces Motor Sport’s reporter noted: “When dicing Moss looks relaxed”; others looked grim or open-mouthed.

He was not untouched. He hit the wall in the tunnel, which threw him across the road and gave him pause, and the wall along the harbour front; on lap 87, lapping Perdisa, his team-⁠mate, he ran into the tail of his car when Perdisa braked in front of him, and the Maserati’s bonnet was left lifting. He knew that Fangio was closing. He made no attempt to go faster, since a second in hand would be enough, and at the flag he was 6.1 seconds ahead.

Laps led, of 100

100

Seconds ahead of Fangio

6.1

At half-distance, with Collins 2nd, Motor Sport had looked ahead to the day when British drivers leading a Grand Prix would be driving British cars. At last, its reporter thought, Moss had really won one of the classic Grands Prix, and he was elated.

A fortnight later, on 27 May, at the Nürburgring, his own Maserati broke in the 1000 km race, and he took over the car that Piero Taruffi and Harry Schell had been driving. When Fangio stopped for 25 seconds, Moss went by into the lead and won, sharing the credit with Taruffi, Schell and Behra.

A wheel at Spa, a rag at Reims

At Spa-⁠Francorchamps on 3 June he started 2nd, led into Eau Rouge and for 4 laps, and was 2nd to Fangio when, on lap 11, climbing after the pits at about 80 mph (129 km/⁠h), the drive went. The car weaved, and the left rear wheel came off, hub and brake drum and all, and bounded across the road; the hub shaft had sheared between its bearings at the end of the de Dion tube. He coasted to a stop on the grass and ran back to the pits while a mechanic flagged Perdisa in. He rejoined 6th, a lap and 40 seconds behind Fangio, matched Fangio’s lap times, fought Schell’s Vanwall, which was faster than the Maserati on the Masta straight, and on lap 30 set the lap record, 4:14.7. He finished 3rd, behind Collins and Paul Frère, and Motor Sport recorded the crowd’s verdict: “…and Moss for whom the crowd cheered loudly, being appreciative of one who tries hard.” After Spa two British drivers led the championship, Collins and Moss, with 11 points each.

At Reims-Gueux on 1 July his car was slow, oily and wrongly geared, and he started 8th. It would not start on the grid, and the mechanics pushed him past Fangio and up the road in front of the field, which stopped the starter, Charles Faroux, dropping the flag until the Maserati was running. After 12 laps the gear lever broke. He took over Perdisa’s car, which was swilling with oil, and mopped out the cockpit with a rag while its tank was filled; he finished 5th, 2 laps down, for a single point, half of the 2 for 5th place.

Silverstone and the Nürburgring

At home he took pole position in 1:41.0. Hawthorn’s BRM led away, but the works Maserati took over the lead and pulled clear. A strap on the fuel tank broke and a stop for oil cost him time, and on lap 69 he lost the lead when he stopped to find out why the car was losing power and had the ignition leads changed. He rejoined 2nd, ahead of Collins and behind Fangio. As he started his 93rd lap a dreadful noise came from the gearbox, he could find no gears, and he stopped on the far side of the circuit.¹ His fastest lap, 1:43.2, was worth a point. That afternoon he won the sports-car race in a works 300S, in rain that did not seem to bother him.

On 28 and 29 July he and Collins drove an Aston Martin DB3S to 2nd place at Le Mans. At the Nürburgring on 5 August, in the German Grand Prix, he started 4th and ran 3rd behind Fangio and Collins; the Maserati, Motor Sport judged, could not cope with the Lancia-Ferrari on that circuit. When Collins retired Moss was 2nd, and over the last 2 laps, with the transmission grinding, he coasted through the corners in top gear to save it. Fangio, who broke the lap record, won by 46.4 seconds, and Moss was 7 minutes ahead of Behra. Motor Sport counted those 22 laps among the toughest drives he had made.

A week later, at Kristianstad, in the Swedish sports-car Grand Prix, the Maserati 300S he shared with Behra retired. Before Monza, Fangio had 30 points, Collins and Behra 22 each and Moss 19: only a win with the fastest lap, worth 9, could carry Collins past Fangio, and Moss could not reach him at all.

Monza, 2 September

For the Italian Grand Prix, on Monza’s road and banked circuit, Maserati built him a new car, its engine angled to the left so that the propeller shaft ran under his left knee, with a five-speed gearbox and a fuel tank on rubber mountings and spring-loaded bolts. He started 6th. Everyone feared for their tyres: the banking was throwing treads, and Castellotti and Musso stripped theirs racing each other in the first 5 laps. Then Moss, Fangio, Collins and Schell, in the Vanwall, fought for the lead, and Schell led for a full lap. A shower lasting 3 laps sorted them out, Moss drew clear, and on lap 19 a steering arm broke on Fangio’s car. On lap 35 Collins stopped for a tyre and handed his car to Fangio.

Moss started lap 45 with his usual lead. Through the Lesmo turns his engine cut: he had run out of fuel. He coasted on, and the next car along was the Maserati of Luigi Piotti. Piotti saw what had happened at once, nosed his car up behind Moss’s and pushed it all the way back to the pits, and Moss freewheeled in with the filler cap held open for 25 litres to be poured in. Musso led while he stopped. Moss’s next lap was a record, and then his pit, afraid that a bald rear tyre would burst, slowed him, not knowing that Fangio was only 20 seconds behind. With 3 laps to go Musso’s steering arm broke, and Moss won by 5.7 seconds from Fangio in Collins’s car, with two litres of fuel left in the tank, not enough for another lap.

Lap on which he ran dry

45

Seconds ahead of Fangio at the line

5.7

Both new fuel tanks had split, his along one of its riveted seams. Of the push, Motor Sport, which expected a special rule by the next season, wrote: “There was no regulation to forbid Moss being pushed by another car.” Piotti, who finished 6th, the first Italian home, had made his name twice that day. In Motor Sport’s report Piotti saw what to do on his own; a version told half a century later has Moss signalling to him for a push. Afterwards the cockpit of the winning car was spotless, and Moss had not a speck of oil on his overalls, which Motor Sport thought remarkable for a Maserati.

The race decided the title, but not between Fangio and Moss. Collins’s handover ended his own slim chance; Fangio’s half-share of 2nd place added nothing to the 30 points that counted for him; Moss’s 9 points took his counted total to 27, 3 short.² Each of the three leaders had scored in someone else’s car that year, and Jenkinson, who wanted car-changing abolished, wrote in October:

Four continents, and a green car

He raced on to the end of the year and won four of his last five races. He was 2nd in the Tour de France Automobile, sharing a Mercedes-⁠Benz 300 SL with Houel. In November he won the Venezuelan Grand Prix for sports cars at Caracas and the Australian Tourist Trophy at Albert Park, Melbourne, in a Maserati 300S; on 2 December, on the same circuit, the Australian Grand Prix, a Formula Libre race, in a works 250F, a lap ahead of Behra; and on 9 December the Nassau Trophy in the Bahamas. That year he won on four continents.

After Monza he tested the Vanwall at Silverstone and at Oulton Park. It was very fast, though its brakes, suspension and fuel injection still gave trouble, and at Oulton Park he beat the lap record, his own from a works Maserati in 1955, every time he went round; Tony Brooks then went faster still. Jenkinson gave the news in December:

He had already won in one. Of the International Trophy at Silverstone in May, Motor Sport had written: “The race now resolved into a procession – ably led by Stirling Moss in a British car.” Three years after the Aintree speech in which he had hoped for a car that was British through and through, he would drive one in the Grands Prix of 1957.