"A Bloody Go"

It's no thrill blasting down the straightaway at 180 m.p.h. What's really thrilling is taking a 70-m.p.h. corner at 75--coming through it at the absolute limit of tire adhesion, with the nose pointed perfectly down the straightaway and the throttle flat on the floor. Then you feel like an artist who has spent his life trying to paint the smile of Mona Lisa, finally gets it right with a single flick of his brush, and says to the rest of the world, "There, you bastards, match that!" There are not many who can even come close to Britain's Stirling Moss as a racing driver. Pint-sized and profane, he is on his way to becoming a legend in his own lifetime--pursued by women, fawned over by royalty, idolized by fans the world over. At 32, he has won more races (194) than any man alive, more world championship Grand Prix races (14) than any driver in history save Argentina's Juan Fangio, who had 16 when he quit at 47 four years ago. Moss has never won the official Grand Prix championship. But last year he won 23 of the 48 races he entered, and his fellow drivers concede that Moss sets the standard by which they judge their own skills. Says the U.S.'s Phil Hill, who won the 1961 Grand Prix championship racing for Ferrari: "I'm the champion, but all anyone talks about is Moss." Moss's fan mail runs to 10,000 letters a year and his income to something like $150,000. He drives as if every race were his last--with a raw fury that borders on desperation. He has pressed wildly on with hot oil spraying in his face, raced with his leg in a plaster cast, sped around curves while nearly blinded by glass fragments in his eyes. He cannot even remember how many crashes he has survived.

"Most of them were incidents, not accidents," he says. "Twice my steering wheel snapped off. Nine or ten times the brakes failed. Ten or eleven times wheels fell off.

I don't know how many times I got crunched by another car, or tires blew, or things broke. Death is something that frightens me, and thinking about it isn't going to make it less likely to happen. I wouldn't drive a racing car unless there was an element of danger involved. Does a bullfighter want to fight a bull without horns?"

Warm Seats & Melted Silver. In Chichester last week for the 100-mile Goodwood International Grand Prix, Moss played himself to the hilt. Supercharged and sassy, he played croquet, guzzled fruit juice at a cocktail party thrown by the Duke of Richmond and Gordon (whom he irreverently called "Your Gryce" in a broad Cockney accent), stayed up twisting at a country dancehall until 2 a.m. On race morning, while other drivers, taut and nervous, brooded over seltzer and coffee, he happily downed a huge breakfast, described the novel furnishings he was planning for his bachelor digs in London: a heated toilet seat and a 300-lb. silver coffee table made from melted-down trophy cups ("What else can you do with silver? Fill teeth?").

Moss had hoped for rain ("I do better in the wet"), but a bright sun warmed the crowd of 72,000. Settling into the cockpit of his low-slung, pale green Lotus, Moss joshed Rival Graham Hill, who was piloting a faster BRM: "Don't try too hard, Graham, or you'll blow it up." He screwed in his earplugs, snapped his helmet strap and adjusted his goggles. "Hey," he yelled to Mechanic Tony Robinson. "Where's my chewing gum?" Robinson handed him a stick. Moss waved. "Here goes," he said. Then, exhaust crackling fiercely, he roared off to the starting line.

17th & Last. The race was only eight laps old when Moss, brakes squealing, pulled into the pits. His throttle linkage was fouled; his gearbox was jammed tightly in fourth. By the time the pit crew, working furiously, had repaired the car, Moss's position was hopeless: he was 17th and last, more than three laps behind the leader, Hill. "What are you going to do?" asked a friend. Said Moss, with a wicked grin: "Have a bloody go."

The next 27 laps were what the crowd had come to see. Around and around the 2 1/2-mile Goodwood circuit, with its six corners and dangerous, S-shaped chicane, he drove with awesome speed. Relentlessly, he closed the gap on Hill: from 17th, he moved up to 15th, then 13th, 11th and 9th. He saluted as he passed other cars and waved to Mechanic Robinson in the pits. "Stirling is driving incredibly," reported the track announcer from his vantage point in a tower. "He's taking the corners faster than ever before." In a Lola, Britain's John Surtees sped to a new lap record of 1 min. 23.6 sec. Moss cut it to 1 min. 23.4 sec., then to 1 min. 23 sec., then 1 min. 22.6 sec., then 1 min. 22.4 sec.--each split second pushing him closer to the limit of adhesion. In Moss's pit, dockers exchanged glances, and tension killed conversation. Murmured a mechanic, "He's pushing it." Past the Limit. On the 34th lap, Moss clipped his time to 1 min. 22.2 sec., flashing around the narrow, twisting course at a fantastic average speed of 105 m.p.h.

On the 35th, as he approached St. Mary's Corner--a difficult right-and-left jog in the road--the limit was passed. Said Moss, before the race: "With luck, you can take St. Mary's at 90 m.p.h." Recalled Graham Hill, afterward: "As we went into St. Mary's, Stirling was coming up on me at about 110 m.p.h. on the outside. In the mirror I saw him coming up fast, and then he just kept going straight." Moss's Lotus hurtled across 150 yds. of grass, plowed head on into an 8-ft.-high embankment, spun backwards about 10 yds., and stopped dead, a crumpled, almost unrecognizable ruin.

Rescuers found Moss slumped unconscious in the cockpit--his goggles shattered, his blue, flameproof coveralls shredded, his helmet cracked, his face masked with blood. Moss's lips, gums and nose were split, and his right cheek was torn open to the bone. With metal shears and hacksaws, mechanics worked for 30 minutes before they could free the racer from his aluminum cocoon: the twisted steering wheel was jammed tightly in his ribs; the car's body shell clamped his legs and thighs; the gas tank (up front in the rear-engined Lotus) was pushed back almost into his lap. Moss's father Alfred arrived at the gas-reeking wreck. "Please don't let it burn," he pleaded softly, and someone lifted the car's live battery from between Moss's calves. To his unconscious son, he kept repeating: "You'll be all right, boy. Don't you worry, now. We'll get you out of here." Patient Vigil. At Chichester's Royal West Sussex Hospital, doctors sewed up Moss's face with 40 stitches. Incredibly, his blood pressure and pulse were perfectly normal. X rays showed surprisingly little damage--two broken ribs, a cracked knee, a torn shoulder. But Moss was in a deep coma. Transferred to a neurological hospital in London, he was examined by brain surgeons, who found no indication of skull fracture or severe brain hemorrhage, though he remained unconscious.

From Nairobi, where she had just placed third in last week's tortuous, 3,080-mile East African Rally, Moss's sister Pat hurried back to join the vigil at his bedside. By week's end, Stirling was out of his coma, responding to commands, speaking briefly to relatives and friends. Doctors said he would probably recover com pletely, could perhaps race again within six weeks. His father, a onetime racer himself (he placed 16th at Indianapolis in 1924), could only say, "This is what I've been afraid of. You can't go on having accidents like this. But you can't tell a man of 32 to give up his life's work just like that."

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