Is Stirling Moss Motorsport's Greatest All-Rounder?

Many drivers have competed across different motorsport categories and a select few have been successful in multiple disciplines. But only Moss was so consistently the benchmark whatever he got into.

YES

KEVIN TURNER

Editor

There’s little doubt that Moss was the world’s best sportscar driver by the mid-1950's, underlined by the significant advantage he had over Mercedes team-mate Juan Manuel Fangio during ’55. How he stacked up against the Argentinian – who must still be regarded as one of the top 10 Formula 1 drivers ever – over the next two F1 campaigns is open to debate, but once Fangio retired Moss became the undisputed top dog.

He famously never won the F1 world title, but his peers knew he was the man to beat. From the start of 1958 to the end of ’61, Moss won more world championship grands prix than anyone else (10, to second-best Jack Brabham’s seven), despite missing some of the ’60 season and driving for Rob Walker’s privateer squad against factory teams. He was thus the best in both F1 and sportscars, which at that time was virtually on a par with grand prix racing.

But that is only part of the argument for Moss. He also won the first saloon car races in the United Kingdom at Silverstone – events that led to the formation of what we now call the British Touring Car Championship – and was an ace in F2 and 500cc F3 machines, taking on and beating the category specialists. He often won multiple races in different cars on the same weekend.

One of the reasons he was able to do this was that Moss could win in inferior equipment. He could jump in, get on the pace quickly and maximise what he had, surely essential traits for any potential ‘greatest all-rounder’.

He was, simply, versatile at a higher level than everyone else.

NO

EDD STRAW

Editor-in-Chief