His time was never beaten after the Italians

These days Sir Stirling Moss drives a battery-powered Renault Twizy, maximum speed 50mph, range 25 miles each way.

But 60 years ago on Friday Moss drove the race of his life, and arguably the race of anyone’s life: 1,000 miles across the roads of Italy in 10 hours, seven minutes and 48 seconds at the ludicrous average speed of 98.53mph.

He became the first and only Briton to win the Mille Miglia, a hurtle so dangerous that the Italian government outlawed the race two years later. Sixty competitors and spectators had been killed in 30 years. Enough was enough, even for the speed-mad Latins.

Moss’s time was never beaten. And his fame endures into his 86th year.

Sir Stirling Moss relaxes in his chair at his Mayfair home which he bought for only £5,000 in 1961

Moss is pictured waving from his balcony... he is the only Briton ever to have won the gruelling Mille Miglia

I catch him at his house in Mayfair — bought as a bomb site in 1961 for £5,000 and worth heaven knows what now — on his return from a few celebratory days in Italy, during which he drove the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR that he steered to his Mille Miglia victory.

Moss started the race at 7.22am on May Day, 1955, and drove into the face of the rising sun. Sitting next to him was his navigator, Denis Jenkinson, the late, venerated Continental Correspondent of Motor Sport magazine.

Just 5ft 2in and bearded, ‘Jenks’ looked older than his then 34 years. A singular man, he lived in a shack in a Hampshire wood without even mains electricity. A friend visiting his house was surprised to see Jenkinson eating one of the two eggs he had fried for them off the draining board, and asked why.

‘You’ve got the plate,’ came the explanation, as Jenkinson gobbled up the last mouthful of his breakfast before it slid into the sink.

Jenkinson was an incurable eccentric but, in Moss’s words, ‘had no fear at all’, having raced as a sidecar passenger, winning the world title in 1949 with Eric Oliver.

Moss is pictured moments after winning in a record time of 10 hours, seven minutes and 48 seconds

He was just the meticulous presence Moss needed at his elbow. Seven times prior to the race, the Brits drove the course from Brescia to Rome and back, noting every hillock and gradient. Back in Mayfair today, Moss walks over to the self-playing piano — typical of Stirling’s Bond-style house of electrical gadgets — and picks up an alloy case with a Perspex cover. Inside is an 18ft reel of paper — the pace notes he and Jenkinson made of the Mille Miglia route.

Spooling through those pain-staking notes, colloquially known as the toilet roll, Jenkinson made hand signals advising Moss to slow down or speed up. The din of the engine was too loud for chatter.

Moss’s drive was a masterclass of precision and stamina, but not without incident. ‘I remember we were coming dead straight into a humpback bridge,’ he says. ‘Jenks had it down as flat-out, which we had done in practice. But then we were only doing 80mph and now we were at 170mph. We took off for 80 yards, and it wouldn’t stop.

‘I thought, I must not turn the wheel in mid-air. Any deviation would have been disastrous.’

Soot-faced and panda-eyed from their goggles, they made it to the finish 32 minutes ahead of their Mercedes team-mate Juan Manuel Fangio.

Jenkinson later sat on his hotel balcony overlooking the Bay of Naples and wrote his account of the race.

He had not made a single note, perforce, but his vivid report — signed with his customary D.S.J. initials — is the single most famous piece of motorsport writing.

Moss takes the chequerd flag in his Mercedes. Sitting next to him is his navigator, Denis Jenkinson

The next year Moss, again navigated by Jenkinson, toppled over a cliff-edge in blinding spray, only to be saved by a tree. Six spectators died in another accident.

And when Spanish nobleman the Marquis de Portago’s Ferrari bowled into the crowd in 1957, killing himself, his co-driver and 13 spectators, including five children, it was the end of the real Mille Miglia.

The event was rerun as an historic rally and Moss returned. Jenkinson’s seat was taken by Ian Wooldridge, our late, peerless colleague at the Daily Mail. But as Moss says fondly: ‘Ian was a bloody good writer, but not much of a navigator.’

What Wooldridge shared with Jenkinson was a total admiration for Moss’s artistry at the wheel, writing: ‘If you are contemplating the grand cultural tour of Italy, reflecting on the genius of the Florentine masters and absorbing the architecture of ancient Siena, I’m afraid I can grant my chauffeur no references. In fact he’s damned lucky to get nought out of 10.

‘Florence? We went there, did that. Got through the place in six minutes 56 seconds. Would have been quicker but for the crazy road system round that blockhouse with the dome.

‘Siena? Boy, did we give that a seeing to. If my chauffeur hadn’t been mobbed at one stage, we’d have been in and out in under three minutes, leaving only a trail of pollution and a few Renaissance portraits bouncing off walls.

‘Early on, when Stirling pulls out to confront fast oncoming traffic, you reckon the best you can get away with is quadriplegia. But he has done it so many millions of times that you suddenly find yourself easing back to your side of the road through a gap which even George Best, on the soccer field, could not have created. Shameful prayer soon gives way to exhilarating enjoyment.’

Moss was speaking to Sportsmail's Jonathan McEvoy on the 60th anniversary of his brilliant Mille Miglia win

Moss, who still peppers every conversation with ‘old boy’, has little time for the modern craze for safety at the expense of thrill. ‘Motor racing should be dangerous,’ he says. ‘If you don’t want that, go and do something else.

‘Sir Jackie Stewart has done so much to improve safety but I have a completely opposite view from him. He says, and it is understandable, if there is a tree that could cause injury, cut it down. I would say put more trees up and be more careful.

‘If you ask the real racers now, people like Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel, they want a challenge. Any driver worth his salt wants that, old boy.’