Danger's Companion

I would not like to drive a racing car unless there was an element of danger involved, any more than I would like to fight a bull without horns. And when I take a corner perfectly, it's like a painter who has been sweating at a portrait and can't quite capture a smile and then makes it with one stroke of the brush.

Danger is Stirling Moss's obsession. In his long companionship with peril he has driven a racing car with one leg in a plaster cast. He has sped around curves while nearly blinded by glass fragments in his eyes. His crash helmet has been dented by a rival's car hurtling just over his head. And it is mostly because of his fascination with danger that Britain's Moss, 30, is by common consent the world's fastest driver.

Moss's record is his own monument. He has won most of the world's great motor races, many of them several times. He has been Britain's champion nine times. One of his regular rivals wryly acknowledges: "When I pass Moss, I wonder what is wrong with his car." Says his fellow British driver, Tony Brooks: "Driving over 200 miles on each of the world's circuits, Stirling would turn out quite a bit better than anyone else." Says Australia's skilled Jack Brabham: "He's the toughest competitor anybody can have. All he lives for is driving. Just about all he thinks of is driving."

Last week Stirling Moss and California's Dan Gurney drove a Maserati to victory in a grueling, 620-mile sports car race in Nurburgring, Germany. This week, as Europe's Grand Prix season opens at Monaco, Stirling Moss is as always the driver to beat. But despite his great success, Moss is a restless, unhappy man--for in his twelve years of professional driving, he has never yet won motor racing's highest honor, the Grand Prix driving championship.

Sliding & Slipstreaming. Moss's own perfectionism is his greatest handicap, argues the London Daily Express's Basil Cardew, forcing him "to exact more from a car, because he makes it go faster, than possibly anyone we have known in the past." His demands have resulted in a long history of mechanical breakdowns and kept the Grand Prix championship beyond his reach. But Stirling Moss insists he can drive no other way.

The son of a London dentist, Moss has been driving autos since he was ten. Muscular but small--he weighs 154 lbs. and stands 5 ft. 8 in. "with my thick socks on"--he is ideally built to withstand the hours of high-speed driving in a racer's tiny cockpit. His experience has taught him every trick of handling the 250-h.p. Grand Prix cars. He can swing a car into a slide to kill speed, use a bank bordering on a turn, as a buffer to keep his rear wheels on the road. He won last year's Italian Grand Prix by "slipstreaming"--tailing a Ferrari so closely that the rival car acted as a windbreak, letting Moss conserve precious fuel and tires.

Frightening Situation. Moss is at his best in the tire-tearing duels on the corners, where drivers must rapidly downshift from speeds of 160 m.p.h. to 60 m.p.h. and below, then shift up again. Says Moss: "The thing to remember is that it is the speed with which you come out of the corner that matters. If you come out of a corner five miles an hour faster than any other man, you've got a big advantage going into the straight."

Since 1956, 13 Grand Prix drivers have been killed, and Moss himself admits to fear: "In a race, it's a matter of inches. If you overdo it, you lose control of the car. Once you know you have lost control --that the car can do what it wants and not what you want it to do--it's a very frightening situation." But it is that sort of danger that Moss loves best. "Driving a racing car," he says, "is something I think I'll enjoy for as long as I live." Then he adds: "However long that is."

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