1959 Four poles, two wins and an Italian gearbox

At half-distance in the Monaco Grand Prix, on 10 May 1959, Stirling Moss was 40 seconds ahead of Jack Brabham, in Rob Walker’s dark-blue Cooper. Then he felt a vibration in the transmission. He stopped at the pits and rejoined, and he had hardly reached the Gasworks hairpin when a grinding noise came from the rear of the car. Brabham won.

That was the shape of his year. Moss started from pole in half of his eight Grands Prix, and he led at Monaco, at Zandvoort and at Sebring; each time the transmission failed. He won twice, at Monsanto and at Monza, and finished 3rd in the championship, with 25½ points to Brabham’s 31 and Tony Brooks’s 27.

A private team

Vanwall had withdrawn at the end of 1958, and Mike Hawthorn, champion by a point that year, had retired; on 22 January 1959 Hawthorn died in a road accident near Guildford. Moss joined no works team. He stayed with Rob Walker, the private entrant for whom he had won in Argentina a year before, and drove the R.R.C. Walker Racing Team’s Coopers, with Maurice Trintignant as his team-⁠mate. Between Walker and Moss there was no written contract, only a handshake. The cars were prepared by Walker’s chief mechanic, Alf Francis, who had looked after Moss’s cars since his HWM days.

Cooper would not sell Walker its own gearbox. On the advice of Moss and Francis, Walker went instead to Valerio Colotti in Modena, whose five-speed boxes were built by Tec-Mec. They made the car faster, and they broke. Thirty-five years on, Moss summed the Colotti box up himself: “It was a wonderful gearbox, but made of crap, really.” The failures brought him criticism as a car-breaker, and in the same interview he answered it: he had finished as many races in the Cooper as Trintignant, a careful driver, but a man who drops out while leading, or after setting the fastest lap, takes the blame.

There was a second team in the family. In 1958 his father, Alfred Moss, and his manager, Ken Gregory, had founded the British Racing Partnership, BRP, to run a Formula Two Cooper.

New Zealand to Silverstone

The year began at Ardmore, in the New Zealand Grand Prix in January. On the last lap of his heat a drive-shaft of Walker’s Cooper broke while he was leading, and he pushed the car home. He started the final from the back of the grid, led from the second lap and won, with the fastest lap.

At Goodwood on Easter Monday, 30 March, Walker’s new Cooper-BRM, a Cooper chassis with BRM’s four-cylinder engine, was not ready, and Moss drove the 2½-litre Cooper-⁠Climax. He had spun it in practice, damaging it slightly; his mechanics, Motor Sport reported, had apparently been casual about the steering connections. In the race he set the fastest lap and won the Glover Trophy by 16.6 seconds from Brabham. Bill Boddy, reporting, saw a dull season ahead: “If this is British F1 racing we are going to be bored to tears for the rest of this season!”

In the Cooper-BRM, at Aintree on 18 April, he ran 2nd to Masten Gregory, then led and set a new lap record, until on lap 30 the gearbox lost its drive: one small nut had worked itself loose. A week later, in Walker’s Cooper-⁠Borgward, he won the Formula Two race at Syracuse. At Silverstone on 2 May he took pole for the International Trophy in a BRM and led on the third lap. On the fourth, coming into Copse Corner, the brake pedal went to the floor. He spun the car to a stop with its nose inches from the bank and the engine still running, and walked away. Juan Manuel Fangio, who had started the race, saw it all. Motor Sport’s verdict on the afternoon was “For Moss the race was nearly fatal, for Ferrari a fiasco, and again Lotus had got nowhere.” At the same meeting Moss won the race for GT cars in an Aston Martin DB4, and was 2nd in the sports-car race in a DBR1.

Monaco and Zandvoort

Practice at Monaco became a duel with Jean Behra’s Ferrari, and Moss settled it on the last day with pole position, in 1:39.6. The Cooper-BRM was tried and put aside, because its gear selection was wrong; according to Denis Jenkinson, of Motor Sport, Moss raced the Cooper that had won at Monaco for Walker in 1958, with a 2½-litre Climax engine and a Colotti gearbox. In the race he sat behind Behra, keeping the Cooper large in the Ferrari’s mirrors in the hope of worrying him. When the Ferrari faltered on lap 22 he went ahead, and he was drawing away when the transmission began to vibrate.

Before the Dutch Grand Prix he tested a BRM for Dunlop at Zandvoort: 105 laps at very high speed, faster than the lap record. On race day, 31 May, he was hemmed in at the start and then held up for 24 laps by Behra. Jenkinson watched him shake his fist, pull out on one side of the Ferrari and then the other, and even try to nudge its tail with the nose of the Cooper. At last he went round the outside of Behra at Tarzan. He caught Jo Bonnier’s BRM and passed it, and from the 60th lap he led. After 3 laps in front a ball race in the gearbox broke up, and he was out. Bonnier won, BRM’s first World Championship win.

The timekeepers gave the fastest lap first to Bonnier, then to three drivers at once, and finally to Moss; they needed two attempts at the time itself. It earned him the only point he took from the race.

Aston Martin’s year

Aston Martin had meant to race only at Le Mans. Moss persuaded John Wyer to send a single DBR1 to the Nürburgring 1000 km on 7 June, and won it with Jack Fairman, at the wheel himself for most of the race. At Le Mans he was the team’s hare, sent off to wear down the Ferraris; his car broke, the Ferraris broke too, and Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby won for Aston Martin. At Goodwood on 5 September a fuel fire at a pit stop engulfed the car he shared with Salvadori. Moss took over the Shelby and Fairman car, won the Tourist Trophy, and with it the World Sportscar Championship for Aston Martin. The sports cars tells all three races.

The pale-green BRM

Before Zandvoort Sir Alfred Owen of BRM had handed two cars to his father’s and Gregory’s team, against the wishes, Jenkinson reported, of BRM’s own team at Bourne. Assembled by BRP, painted pale green with white wheels, with an engine built at Bourne and one works mechanic to look after it, the BRM P25 was Moss’s car for the next two Grands Prix.

The French Grand Prix at Reims-Gueux, on 5 July, was run in searing heat: over 110°F (43°C) in the sun, by Jenkinson’s account. Moss qualified 4th, after using the escape road at Thillois to take a flying run at the timing line, and ran 2nd on the opening laps before the Ferraris and Coopers, faster on the straights, drew away. He set the fastest lap of the race; before half-distance his clutch failed. On lap 43 he spun on melting tar at Thillois, and without a clutch the engine stalled. In Jenkinson’s report he chose disqualification rather than sit by the roadside in that heat, accepted a push and drove quietly back to the pits. Fifty years later, he remembered it differently.

I spun on melted tar at the Thillois hairpin and, because the clutch had packed up, I exhausted myself by fruitlessly attempting to push-start the car while it was in gear. There was simply no chance of achieving that and I was out of the race.

The two accounts agree that his race was over. The databases still credit him with the point for the fastest lap. The Daily Mirror reported a crash at more than 100 mph (161 km/⁠h) and a miraculous escape; there had been no crash, and the car was undamaged. An hour after the Grand Prix, very tired in the heat, he won the Formula Two race in Walker’s Cooper-⁠Borgward.

At Aintree on 18 July he started 7th and drove the BRM in long, full-lock slides to within 10 seconds of Brabham’s Cooper. Then he had to stop for tyres. Dunlop had expected them to last the race, without allowing for his lapping nearly 2 seconds faster than in practice, and he came in for new ones on lap 50; with 9 laps left he stopped again for fuel, because the pump would no longer pick it up. Bruce McLaren went by. Moss passed him again within a lap, and at the finish he kept to the right of the road, scattering the people standing there, to leave McLaren room to try on the left, a sporting gesture in Jenkinson’s eyes. Moss was 2nd by 0.2 seconds, and they shared the fastest lap, 1:57.0, and the point it carried, half each. After Aintree he went back to Walker’s Cooper, and BRP put Hans Herrmann in the BRM.

Rouen, Clermont-Ferrand and the AVUS

After Monaco he had tested Maserati’s new 2-⁠litre Tipo 60 sports car at the Modena autodrome, and persuaded Maserati to let him race it at Rouen. Its frame of many small tubes gave it the name “Birdcage”, and Goodwood’s history of the car says that his testing showed the chassis to be, if anything, too strong.

At Rouen-les-Essarts on 12 July he won its first race, the Coupe Delamere Deboutteville, and on the same day the Formula Two Rouen Grand Prix in Walker’s Cooper-⁠Borgward. To Motor Sport’s reporter, the other drivers taken all together could barely equal his driving. Goodwood credits the sports-car win with selling the first six Maseratis of the type.

On 26 July he won the Trophée d’Auvergne for Formula Two cars at Clermont-⁠Ferrand. Ivor Bueb, his co-driver at Sebring in March, crashed in that race and died about a week later.

The German Grand Prix of 2 August was run on the AVUS in Berlin, in two heats. On the day before, Jean Behra was killed in the sports-car race there. Moss, in Walker’s Cooper again, started 2nd; on the second lap of the first heat the gears between the engine and the gearbox stripped.

Monsanto, 23 August

In 1959 the Portuguese Grand Prix went to Monsanto, a true road circuit on the edge of Lisbon, with cobbles, tram lines, a concrete dual carriageway and bends lined with trees. Walker’s Climax engine had a new cylinder head, worth some 12 to 15 bhp by Jenkinson’s estimate, and Moss had five gears to Brabham’s four. In practice he lapped in under 2:10 even while he was playing with tyre pressures and the balance of the brakes, and he took pole by more than 2 seconds, in 2:02.89.

To a terrific ovation from the crowds Moss finished his 62nd lap, to win his first Grande Epreuve of this season, but to win it so thoroughly that it made up for all his past failures.

He passed Brabham halfway round the first lap and pulled away at a steady 2 seconds or more a lap, soon so far ahead that for some corners he hardly bothered to change gear. When Brabham crashed on lap 24, unhurt, Moss very nearly stopped at the Cooper pit next time round to tell them that he was all right. On lap 45 he leant out of the cockpit and held his nose: a small leak of fuel. On lap 58 of 62 he lapped Masten Gregory, who was 2nd, and with him the whole field.

He had led at the end of every lap, from pole, and set the fastest lap as well, the only time in his World Championship career that he did all three in one race.

Monza, 13 September

At Monza three weeks later he was on pole, a tenth of a second faster than Brooks’s Ferrari, in 1:39.7. Tyre wear in practice had been alarming, and for the Saturday Walker had his car fitted with splined rear hubs and knock-off wire wheels, in case a stop was needed. In the race Moss let Phil Hill lead from the second lap, taking the corners gently to save his tyres and catching the Ferrari again on acceleration. Between laps 33 and 36 all three leading Ferraris stopped for new tyres. Moss did not stop, and Jenkinson saw what he had done: “Moss now had no intention of stopping for tyres and had led the entire Ferrari team into a trap, and they had played right into his hands.”

He won by 46.7 seconds from Hill, at a record average, with tread to spare, while Brabham, 3rd, had worn his tyres dangerously thin. On lap 57 he lapped Cliff Allison and then sat behind him for a few laps, as if to relieve the boredom. Two wins in three weeks had put him on 25½ points and into a three-way decider with Brabham and Brooks, in December.

Sebring, 12 December

The autumn brought more wins outside the championship: the International Gold Cup at Oulton Park on 26 September, with the fastest lap and a lap of honour in a Sunbeam Alpine through a crowd of admirers; a Formula Libre race at Watkins Glen in October, in a BRP Cooper; and at Nassau in December the Governor’s Trophy, driving an Aston Martin DBR2.

The first United States Grand Prix was run at Sebring, where in March he had been disqualified with Bueb from the 12 Hours for refuelling illegally. Walker’s Cooper now had coil-spring rear suspension designed, Motor Sport said, largely by Moss himself. He took pole by 3 seconds, in 3:00.0, 20 seconds faster than his own record there in an Aston Martin. Someone had pasted a photograph of Brabham cornering hard on to the car’s mirror, and for 5 laps it showed what was behind him. He led by 10 seconds when the gearbox failed, and he coasted to a stop in the esses.

McLaren won, and the title was Brabham’s. Moss was 3rd, as he would be in 1960 and again in 1961.