Most seem to think Moss is a champion, just without a championship (though he has been constructors champion twice since its inception in 1958).
He is.
For some reason I've never shared the view.
Well, no-one's perfect.
While he was a very strong driver, and I admired his desire to win in British cars, I've always been of the opinion that if he wanted to win bad enough, he'd have abandoned his need to win for a British team and gone back to whichever team produced the best cars, or the second best if he didn't want to go toe-to-toe with Fangio.
1954, 1955, 1956.
In '54, Stirling was pretty much without a drive. It was the beginning of the 2½ litre era, so British designs were sure to be underpowered against the Continental marques. Stirling's manager asked Mercedes if they'd be interested in Moss driving for them - Alfred Neubauer (legendary manager of the Mercedes racing team) was, but thought that Moss may not yet be the complete deal having never driven a top Grand Prix car. He suggested that if a Maserati was good enough for Fangio to race the early part of the season while waiting for the Mercedes to be ready, then maybe that was the way to go for now. Maserati didn't have a works drive available, but agreed to sell Moss a 250F to privately campaign (£5500, in 1954....about the same as a Spitfire cost ten years previously). He regularly mixed it with the works cars (and indeed got up close with the Mercs on occasion) and ended the year driving for the works team. Before '54 was over, Mercedes came calling for his services for 1955, and he spent the year racing GP and sports cars for them.
1956 was an interesting one - Vanwall, Connaught and BRM were all interested enough in him that they provided cars for him to test. The Vanwall was the quickest of the bunch by some margin, but Moss was still unsure about how ready to win it was so asked members of the motor racing press what he should do. They all recommended that he drive for Maserati, so he did.
After that year, the Vanwall was pretty much there-or-thereabouts (though the move to mandate Avgas as a fuel instead of the exotic brews that had gone before in '58 did sabotage it for a while). In 1959 the Cooper revolution really got going (though Moss had served notice of their intentions with
THAT race at Buenos Aires in '58). 1960 he missed much of the season due to injury, '61 everyone but Ferrari was left floundering by the change to 1½ litre engines (though Moss gave them a drubbing at Monaco and the Nurburgring in a year-old Lotus). And we'll never know about what he might have done with the Ferrari that Rob Walker was going to enter for him in 1962, because of that Goodwood crash.
The idea that Moss rejected top drives to try and keep to British cars isn't quite right. His first top drives
were in foreign marques, and after that the British cars had gotten their act together. Yes, he probably did derive more satisfaction winning in British cars (especially if he could beat Ferrari, who he had a slightly complicated relationship with). But he would happily drive anything that would give him a chance of winning.
there goes my support for that team, I hope they fail miserably next year.
sry double post
