Rivalry. Enzo Ferrari, who was usually a good judge of drivers, immediately spotted Moss’ abilities and wrote of him in his book “Piloti, che gente…” “My opinion of Moss is quite simple: this is the man I have often put in the Nuvolari class. He had a passion for speed, drove fast in any car he sat in and he had the great virtue of judging a car only by what he read on the clock, by the time it would give him on any given course. As I also once said, Moss had an uncanny ability to feel his way into a crash. And when he ran out of road, just like Nuvolari did on a number of celebrated occasions, there is an eerie similarity about the way they both came out of it unscathed. If Moss had let his head rule his heart he would have won the world title he so richly deserved.”

Moss is usually known as the best driver never to have won the Formula 1 World Championship: he was runner-up four times in 1955, 1956 and 1957, all behind Juan Manuel Fangio and in 1958, behind fellow countryman and Ferrari driver Mike Hawthorn. He also came third three times.

A rapprochement. The final part of Moss’ career saw him race a Lotus for friend and privateer entrant Rob Walker, who was also heavily involved in sports cars. In fact, with this team, Moss drove several races in Ferraris after sporadic but winning appearances in 1957, winning the Nassau Trophy Race in the Bahamas in a Scuderia Temple Buell 290 MM, and in 1958, with victory in the Cuba GP, at the wheel of a Luigi Chinetti-entered 335 Sport. In 1960, Moss piloted a 250 GT SWB to victory in the Goodwood Tourist Trophy, the Redex Trophy at Brands Hatch and the Nassau Trophy Race. More wins followed in ’61 in the British Empire Trophy, the Peco Trophy and again in Nassau and the Tourist Trophy. Wins in a Ferrari and Walker’s relationship with Enzo Ferrari led to an agreement that should have finally seen Moss drive a Ferrari Formula 1 car under the Walker team banner in 1962. That year, Moss’ sports car season got off to a great start with a win in the Bank Holiday Trophy at Brands Hatch and a class win in the Daytona 3 Hours, as usual at the wheel of the 250 GT SWB. Sadly, the world would never see Moss race a Formula 1 Ferrari as he was seriously injured in a terrible crash, at the wheel of a Lotus, during the Glover Trophy at Goodwood. It left Moss in a coma and after testing a race car in the spring of 1963, he decided to retire from racing.

