Moss told Jenkinson afterwards, quietly and in confidence, “Boy, I was on my personal limit for the whole of that race.” Ferrari’s engineer, Carlo Chiti, said, as Jenkinson reported it, “Moss is Moss.” Simon Taylor later worked out that Moss’s race time was exactly 100 times his pole lap plus 40 seconds: 0.4 seconds a lap slower than pole, on average, for 100 laps. Moss himself, asked in 2006, thought it probably his best race. Ginther, years later, put it his own way: “if I was within three and a half seconds of his greatest drive, I’ll take that any day!”
Zandvoort to Reims
On 22 May, at Zandvoort, the Ferraris showed their real pace in the final session of practice, and Moss’s best time stayed the one he had set on the first day. He started 4th. Wolfgang von Trips and Hill took the first two places for Ferrari, and Clark was 3rd; on the last lap Moss took 4th from Ginther, whose Ferrari had been slowed by a broken throttle spring, and kept it by a tenth of a second.
At Le Mans on 10 and 11 June Moss and Graham Hill shared Walker’s Ferrari 250 GT, entered by the North American Racing Team, until a fan blade broke and the engine lost its water; it was his last Le Mans. In practice at Spa-Francorchamps a week later, on worn tyres, he made a last attempt to make up with his driving what the car lacked in power, and managed 4:08.2. He was 8th on the grid and 8th in the race on 18 June; Ferraris took the first four places. At Reims-Gueux on 2 July he qualified 4th by tucking in close behind von Trips, who never realised that he was giving Moss a good lap time, and in the race a rear brake pipe failed. Giancarlo Baghetti won on his championship debut.
Aintree and the Ferguson
The British Grand Prix at Aintree on 15 July brought a new car into Walker’s entries, the Ferguson P99. Built and run by Ferguson Research, by Tony Rolt and Claude Hill, it had four-wheel drive and a Climax engine at the front, and Walker’s dark blue with a white noseband; it was meant to further the cause of four-wheel drive for road cars. It had raced once, a week before, with Jack Fairman. Moss lapped it in 2:00.6 after only a few laps of practice, and in the wet he was quicker in it than in his Lotus, though Jenkinson saw that his habit of flicking a car into a corner made the neutral-steering Ferguson twitch.
Moss raced the Lotus and Fairman the Ferguson. In heavy rain Moss ran 3rd, then 2nd to von Trips, seldom more than a second behind him. On lap 24 the Lotus slid at Melling Crossing at about 100 mph (161 km/h); he corrected it left, right and left again, let it spin a full circle, caught it, chose a lower gear and took Tatts Corner as if nothing had happened. On lap 45 he came in with no brakes: a balance pipe on the left-rear brake had broken, as one on the other side had at Reims.
Fairman’s Ferguson had been push-started after a pit stop, which was against the rules, and the stewards had disqualified Fairman, but the team was told that the car could go on running. Moss took it over for the last 25 laps, lapping at just over 2 minutes, and Ferrari’s team manager, Eraldo Tavoni, warned his drivers with a pit board: “Look out, Moss is in car 26.” Other teams protested, and the car was called in. Moss himself was not disqualified; if Fairman had stayed in the car, Jenkinson thought, nobody would have protested at all. Von Trips won, ahead of two more Ferraris.
A week earlier, at Silverstone on 8 July, Moss had won the British Empire Trophy for InterContinental cars in Walker’s Cooper, and the GT race in Walker’s Ferrari. A week after Aintree, at Solitude, his UDT-Laystall Lotus retired with a broken gearbox.
