1958 Four wins, and a point short

By the last laps of the Argentine Grand Prix the tread had worn from both rear tyres of Rob Walker’s little Cooper, and the canvas beneath was showing. Stirling Moss could not stop for new ones: the car had bolt-on wheels. He eased his pace, Luigi Musso’s Ferrari did not press him, and on 19 January 1958 Moss won by 2.7 seconds.

It was the first of his four World Championship wins that year, against Mike Hawthorn’s one, and at the end of the season Hawthorn was champion by a single point, 42 to 41. In 1957 Moss had given the Vanwall its first championship wins; in 1958 it won him three more Grands Prix, and it put him out of five races, three of them while he led.

Buenos Aires: the little Cooper

New rules came in for 1958. Fuel had to be 130-octane aviation petrol, races were cut to 300 km or 2 hours, and the Vanwall and BRM teams stayed at home for the first round. Only 10 cars started at the Buenos Aires Autodrome. Without a Grand Prix car of his own for the race, Moss took Rob Walker’s rear-engined Cooper T43, the car Jack Brabham had raced for Walker in 1957, strengthened, given more cooling and fitted with a 1,960cc Coventry Climax engine, on Continental tyres. According to Goodwood’s history of the car, he qualified with a patch over one eye, after his wife had accidentally poked him in it. He started 7th.

Hawthorn led, then Juan Manuel Fangio from lap 10. After a slow start Moss caught Jean Behra and Hawthorn, and when Fangio threw a tread and stopped, Moss was in front, 53 seconds clear of him at half-distance. Then the Cooper’s tyres began to go. A stop was out of the question, so he eased off, and Musso, who did not know that the tyres would just last, made no serious attempt to catch him. Moss won the 80 laps in 2h 19m 33.7s, by 2.7 seconds from Musso, with Hawthorn 3rd and Fangio 4th.

Even though this little Cooper, with canvas showing on both rear wheels, was in the sights of the Ferrari, Musso seemed more content with a certain second place than having-⁠a-⁠go for first place, so that Moss ran out the winner of the 1958 Argentine Grand Prix.

Later accounts add a bluff: Walker’s mechanics, it is said, laid out fresh tyres in the pit as if for a stop, so that Ferrari would expect him to come in, and then wheeled them back into the garage. The report of the race says only that Musso did not know the Cooper’s tyres would last; it mentions no bluff, and names no one who thought of it.

It was the first World Championship win for a rear-engined car (leaving Indianapolis aside), the first for Cooper and the first for a privately entered car. Auto Union had won Grands Prix with rear-engined cars in the 1930s, so it was not the first rear-engined Grand Prix win of all; it was the beginning of the change to rear-engined cars in the World Championship.

The rest of his visit to Argentina went less well. The Scuderia Centro Sud Maserati 300S he was to share with Behra in the Buenos Aires 1000 km broke in practice; Porsche lent them a works Spyder, and they finished 3rd, on the same lap as the two leading Ferraris. In the city’s Formula Libre Grand Prix on 2 February an Argentine hot-rod knocked the Cooper off at the first corner.

Havana, 24 February

On the evening of 23 February, the eve of the Cuban Grand Prix, Fangio was kidnapped from the lobby of his Havana hotel by members of Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement, and Moss spent that night under police guard. What Fangio told his captors about him is in Moss and Fangio. The race went ahead without Fangio. Early on, by most accounts on the sixth lap, a local driver’s Ferrari slid on oil into the crowd, and spectators were killed; the race was stopped, and Moss, in a North American Racing Team Ferrari 335 S, was declared the winner, ahead of Masten Gregory.

Aston Martin and a Walker Cooper

In sports cars he drove for Aston Martin. At Sebring on 22 March he and Tony Brooks retired their Aston Martin DBR1. At Goodwood on Easter Monday, 7 April, he won the Sussex Trophy in a DBR2, then duelled with Hawthorn in the Glover Trophy in Walker’s Cooper, both of them under the lap record. Five days later he won the British Empire Trophy at Oulton Park in the DBR2, and on 19 April, in a Walker Cooper T45, the Aintree 200, ahead of Behra’s BRM and Brabham. In the Targa Florio on 11 May, sharing a DBR1 with Brooks, he went off the road on the first lap, and the car retired with a broken crankshaft damper.

Vanwall’s summer

Tony Vandervell would not race his Vanwalls until the first European round, at Monaco. Over the winter the cars had been lightened and their engines reworked for aviation petrol, on which they ran much hotter, up to 20°C hotter at the valve seats. The tyres were now Dunlop, the team manager David Yorke, and the drivers again Moss, Brooks and Stuart Lewis-Evans.

Monaco and Zandvoort

At Monaco on 18 May his car had something wrong with its front suspension and steering in practice, and the team manager would not let him take Brooks’s car, offering only the third team car instead. Upset, he did no more practice in the Vanwalls until he had gone to his other employer, Rob Walker, and driven a few laps in the old Cooper. He started 8th. In the race he passed Hawthorn for the lead on lap 32; 6 laps later a valve cap had come adrift and he was out. Maurice Trintignant won in Walker’s Cooper.

At Zandvoort on 26 May all three Vanwalls were on the front row, Lewis-Evans on pole. When the Ferrari drivers goaded Moss to go out and beat his team-⁠mate’s time, he declined: the Vanwalls were all on the front row, and that was enough for him. In the race, in the car numbered 1, he led from the start, set the fastest lap, 1:37.6, lapped everyone but Harry Schell, Behra and Roy Salvadori, and won by 47.9 seconds from Schell’s BRM. Of the six Vanwalls started so far that year, his was the only one to have finished a race, and it had won.

Spa and Le Mans

At Spa-⁠Francorchamps on 15 June he was the only Vanwall driver on the front row. He led away and through the fast Stavelot corner on the first lap, then missed a gear accelerating out of it: the pistons hit the valves and bent them, and his race was over before he had completed a lap. Brooks won. His critics would later count that missed gearchange, made under pressure from Brooks, against him.

At Le Mans a week later he led in the DBR1 he shared with Brabham, with whom he had won the Nürburgring 1000 km on 1 June, until the engine failed after 2 hours 10 minutes; Brabham never drove.

The Monza banking

In 1957 he had stayed away from the 500-mile race on the Monza banking against the Indianapolis drivers, with the explanation “I’m a road racing driver, not a track driver.” (attributed) On 29 June 1958 he took part, in the big Maserati “Eldorado”, carrying its ice-cream sponsor’s name. Motor Sport watched the change in him over the heats: “it was a very frightened and nervous Moss who got into the big car … a new Stirling Moss began to appear”. He lapped at more than 160 mph (257 km/⁠h) and was 3rd in the second heat; in the third the steering box broke on the banking and the car hit the guard rail. He walked away unhurt, badly shaken.

Reims and Silverstone

The Vanwall was too slow at Reims-Gueux on 6 July and ran hot. Moss started 6th, fought Behra and Fangio for 2nd place behind Hawthorn, and finished there, 24.6 seconds behind. On lap 10 Musso, chasing Hawthorn on the fast curves beyond the pits, lost control of his Ferrari and crashed; he died of his injuries. Fangio, 4th, never raced again. After Reims Moss and Hawthorn had 23 points each.

At Silverstone on 19 July Moss took pole with 1:39.4 and chased Peter Collins’s Ferrari, sliding the Vanwall on full lock, with Hawthorn behind them both, until his engine blew in a cloud of smoke on lap 26. Collins won, and Hawthorn’s 2nd place put him 7 points ahead. The same day Moss won the sports-car race in a Lister-⁠Jaguar, and the next day, at Caen, the Caen Grand Prix in Walker’s Cooper.

The Nürburgring, 3 August

He started 3rd on the grid at the Nürburgring, led away, and on lap 3 went round in 9:09.2, a record for the circuit. On lap 4 the magneto failed at the Schwalbenschwanz. The record lap gave him 1 point. Brooks won.

On lap 11 Collins, chasing Brooks, went off the road after the Pflanzgarten, and died of his injuries in hospital. They had come up together through 500cc racing; Collins had shared Moss’s winning Mercedes-⁠Benz in the 1955 Targa Florio and his Aston Martin at Le Mans in 1956, when they were 2nd.

A week later Moss won the Kanonloppet for sports cars at Karlskoga, in Sweden, in a Maserati 300S, and on 16 August he was 2nd at the Roskilde Ring, in Denmark, in the same type of car.

Oporto, 24 August

The Portuguese Grand Prix was run over 50 laps of the Boavista street circuit in Oporto, 7.406 km a lap. Moss took pole with 2:34.21 and led the first lap on a damp track; Hawthorn passed him on the second, and on lap 8, as the roads dried and the Ferrari’s brakes faded, Moss went back in front and drew away. When Hawthorn set a new lap record, 2:32.27, the Vanwall pit hung out a board reading “HAWT REC”. Moss did nothing about it, and did not try for the point the fastest lap carried; the pit took it that the car, or its driver, was not up to a new record.

I normally got the fastest lap. The thing was that there are times when you can make a mistake and I just misunderstood, really, rather than misreading. I misunderstood what it meant. There’s no excuse for it; really and truly I should just have ignored it and just gone for it as I normally would. But the more important time was when Mike went up the escape road.

On his last lap he came up to lap Hawthorn, with Lewis-Evans close behind. The Ferrari slid, and Hawthorn, thinking his mistake had let Lewis-Evans into 2nd place, looked very unhappy. What Moss thought, as Motor Sport reported it, was “Poor old Mike, he looks really upset at being lapped by me.” (attributed) He slowed and waved Hawthorn back in front of him. Moss took the flag, more than 5 minutes clear, in 2h 11m 27.8s.

Hawthorn, still on his 50th lap, spun up the escape road at the same corner and stalled. Moss stopped beside him on his slowing-down lap, engine running, and the two of them waved away the officials who came to help. Hawthorn pushed the Ferrari back out of the escape road, jumped in and put it in gear, and at that moment the car mounted the footpath, facing against the direction of the circuit. It fired, Moss drove on, and Hawthorn turned round and finished. Lewis-Evans was 3rd, a lap down.

The officials’ observers reported that Hawthorn had restarted in the wrong direction, which by the rules meant disqualification, and he was disqualified. The final decision came at 11 o’clock that night. The stewards agreed that the footpath was not the wrong way of the circuit, and, in Denis Jenkinson’s words in Motor Sport, “they accepted confirmation from Moss, who was an eye witness, that there had been no danger to any other competitor”: when Hawthorn spun, every other runner had already stopped racing. Hawthorn kept his 2nd place, its 6 points, and the point for the fastest lap. Jenkinson added that if Moss had simply kept racing on his last lap and stayed ahead, there would have been no argument at all, and Lewis-Evans could have raced Hawthorn to the line for 2nd place.

How Moss put it changed in the telling, as The sportsman follows. On what he did, he never wavered.

Monza and Goodwood

Six days after Oporto he won the Kentish 100 for Formula Two cars at Brands Hatch in Walker’s Cooper. At Monza on 7 September he was on pole again, with 1:40.5, and fought Phil Hill, Hawthorn and Lewis-Evans for the lead until a gearbox bush seized for want of oil and he stopped after 17 laps. Brooks won his third Grand Prix of the year; Hawthorn was 2nd. Hawthorn now had 40 points that counted to Moss’s 32.

On 13 September Moss and Brooks won the Tourist Trophy at Goodwood in a DBR1, at the head of an Aston Martin one-two-three, and Moss set a lap record for sports cars there.

Casablanca, 19 October

The Moroccan Grand Prix was run over 53 laps of the Ain-Diab road circuit, south-west of Casablanca, in its second year. Only six results counted towards the title, and the arithmetic was plain. Moss had to win and set the fastest lap, and Hawthorn had to finish 3rd or lower: a 3rd place would not raise his best six, a 2nd would. Hawthorn took pole by 0.1 seconds; Moss was content with the middle of the front row, and Lewis-Evans started 3rd.

Moss and Hill went side by side at the end of the first lap; on lap 3 Hill went up an escape road, and Moss drew away. Lapping Seidel’s Maserati on lap 18 he touched it and bent the Vanwall’s nose, and his pit hung out “WATCH TEMP”. He set the lap record at 2:22.9 and then 2:22.5. Behind him Brooks held Hawthorn in 3rd place until Brooks’s engine blew on lap 30.

That left Hill 2nd and Hawthorn 3rd, the order Moss needed. Motor Sport described what followed: “Now that Phil Hill had no hope of catching Moss or even worrying him into blowing up the Ferrari pit signalled the American driver to ease up and let Hawthorn take second place for the result of the World Championship crown depended on this race.” On lap 39 Hawthorn went by. Late in the race Harry Schell, a lap down, tailed Moss and even drew alongside in corners, until with 5 laps left Moss slowed and let him go. Moss won by 1m 24.7s, in 2h 09m 15.1s, with the fastest lap; Hawthorn was 2nd and Hill 0.8 seconds behind him.

Hawthorn

42

Moss

41

On the points that counted, Hawthorn was champion by one. Vanwall, with six wins from its nine races, three for Moss and three for Brooks, won the first championship for constructors, 48 points to Ferrari’s 40.

Where the point went

Hawthorn won once all year, at Reims, and scored 49 points, of which his best six counted, 42. Moss scored in six races and counted all 41. On the arithmetic, Oporto decided it twice over. Had the disqualification stood, Hawthorn would have lost the 7 points of his 2nd place and fastest lap and finished on 39.¹ Had the fastest-lap point been Moss’s rather than Hawthorn’s, Moss would have had 42 and Hawthorn 41; that is a sum, not a claim that Moss could have lapped faster that day.

I had no hesitation in doing it. I can’t see how this is open to debate. He was not on the circuit. The fact that he was my only rival [in the championship] didn’t come into my thinking. Absolutely not.

It is the most famous of the turning points, not the only one. He retired the Vanwall five times, at Monaco, Spa, Silverstone, the Nürburgring and Monza, once through his own missed gear, and three of those times he was leading.

He raced on into the winter: on 30 November, at Albert Park in Melbourne, he won the Melbourne Grand Prix in Walker’s Cooper. On 30 December The London Gazette published the New Year Honours, and among the new OBEs was Stirling Craufurd Moss, racing motorist.