The silver trophy, about 18 inches high, took the form of a figurine of a racing driver, and there was no difficulty in recognising the man on whom it had been modelled with impressive accuracy: the incomparable Sir Stirling Moss. As I knocked on the door of his Mayfair house one morning last summer, carrying a bag holding the figurine safely packed in bubble-wrap, it was with the poignant feeling that I might be delivering the last trophy of his phenomenal career.
His retirement from public life was announced the other day, reminding us that between 1948 and 1962 he entered 529 speed events of all kinds, winning 212 of them. Many of the trophies are on display in his house. The one I delivered was to commemorate a race he had won 60 years earlier: the Pescara Grand Prix of 1957, the only world championship race held on the longest circuit ever to feature in the series.
He was to have been the guest of honour at a weekend dedicated to the anniversary of that unique event. His face was all over Pescara – on the posters, the T-shirts, and the labels of the bottles of red wine specially created at a vineyard in the foothills of the Abruzzi mountains, above the town.
Sadly, a troublesome chest infection forced him to send his apologies. He would have enjoyed the festivities, including a parade of priceless old racing cars assembled from all over Italy.
Back in 1957, Pescara was added to the world championship calendar at the last minute, after petrol rationing in Europe – a result of the Suez crisis – had caused the cancellation of several races. There had been important races in the resort halfway down Italy’s Adriatic coast before the war, but the postwar events had been sporadic and relatively minor. Now, for one weekend only, the circus was back in town.
Fifteen miles long and consisting entirely of normal two-lane roads, the course started in the town and headed up into the hills, passing through several small villages before swooping back down to the seafront. There were no safety precautions of any sort. One driver reported seeing a herd of goats crossing the road during a practice session, and towards the end of the race itself, when only a handful of cars were left running, the gaps between the remaining competitors were so great that children played games on the roads, scattering when they heard the noise of an approaching Ferrari or Maserati.
This was a return to the origins of the sport in races held on open roads from town to town. It was a variety of motor racing never permitted in mainland Britain, where competition on public roads was prohibited by law.
Moss won the 1957 race at the wheel of a Vanwall, the first time a British car and driver had triumphed in a world championship race on foreign soil. In heat that reached 100 degrees he trounced the Italian teams, laying down a marker for the long period of British domination that would soon change the face of Formula One.
Researching a book about that historic race a few years ago, I came across some fascinating and previously unreported stories. A couple of the best concerned Jack Brabham, a future world champion, who on this occasion shared the driving of the Cooper team transporter on the gruelling 1,200-mile journey from Surbiton to Pescara with one of the team’s mechanics, in the days before motorways.
In the race itself, Brabham ran out of petrol on the very last lap. Wanting to get the car out of the way, he freewheeled into the forecourt of a filling station. Like all the commercial premises bordering the circuit, it was closed for the day. But suddenly, to his surprise, a man leapt out of the kiosk, gesturing his willingness to help. With a few litres in the tank, Brabham was able to resume his run to the chequered flag in seventh and last place.
In another contrast to the modern era, all the drivers stayed on to joined Moss at the victory banquet that evening, attended by the mayor of Pescara, whose successor was present 60 years later at the commemorative dinner. “There was none of that getting into your helicopter in a huff and flying off to your Monaco pad,” recalled Tony Brooks, whose Vanwall blew its engine that day. “It was courteous to attend the dinners. And they were fun. Drivers spoke to each other. If there was any nonsense in the race, we’d sort it out at the dinner.”
Moss and Brooks loved the challenge of the road circuit, with its trees, telegraph poles, ditches and stone walls. Brabham, who preferred artificial tracks, detested the experience. “It was a tiring circuit,” Moss said, “but you got a tremendous amount of fulfilment from it.”
Among the memorabilia in Moss’s house are two framed steering wheels, each bent out of shape by a racing accident.
In the first, at Spa in 1960, he broke both legs and crushed several vertebrae but was back at the wheel within seven weeks. The second crash, at Goodwood two years later, ended his career.
There were no more accidents until he was 80, when he stepped into the empty shaft of a two-person lift at his house and fell 30ft on to a concrete floor, breaking his ankles and chipping several vertebrae. Six months later his fans could watch him racing again at the annual Goodwood Revival.
Now, at 88, the effects of that persistent chest infection have taken him out of public life. But nothing can remove him from a place among the nation’s legends.
