A while back, Hagerty editor-at-large Sam Smith began kicking off our mornings by plopping a random archive photo into our staff chat room. His descriptions of those photos were fun, so we ran them as irregular columns.
These days, Sam writes ITMs specifically for publication. Often while drinking too much coffee and going rhetorical walkabout. Enjoy, and let us know what you think in the comments! —Ed.
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Sooner or later, everyone meets trauma. For some, the strain is mental. For others, it’s physical. For a third, less fortunate group, it is both.
Warning: This post contains images that some may find disturbing. It’s worth noting that the photos below were deemed suitable for public consumption in 1960s newspapers. Nevertheless, they depict an injured person.
Consider the racing crash at the top of this page. Incredibly, a man lived through it. When he was pulled from the wreckage of that small and fragile car, on a spring day in the south of England, he was famous, one of the best in the world at what he did for a living, a household name in the land of his birth.
Goodwood, England, April 23, 1962. The Lotus 18/21 Formula 1 car at the top of this post, seen from a different angle. A human survived this. Getty Images
The crash caused significant injury. He recovered, though he was, by his own admission, never quite the same. When he died in bed a few years ago, he remained widely beloved, but he had never regained—or at least, could no longer access—the ability that brought him fame. No one was ever quite sure why.
We spend so much time discussing the importance of our differences. That we do so is not so remarkable as the fact that we know those differences don’t really matter. Most people have a pretty good idea of just how much ties humans together. We have a staggering amount in common; the deltas between us are mostly window dressings of tribe and culture.
Still, we pretend they carry weight: Beware the people from Shelbyville / Foreigntonia / that religious building across town! They’ll drive you from your home and take your things! They hate all you hold dear!
Goodwood, earlier on the same day. The Lotus shown above and at right is third in line. Getty Images
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Not that this doesn’t happen. Genghis was a particularly cruel Khan; Ivan was indeed terrible; Vlad impaled people. But most people simply want to keep what they earn and be left in peace. They aren’t really interested in annexing your Sudetenland or going Mongol on the masses.
Which doesn’t mean we don’t worry about disasters. Only that the odds are against them.
Is it human nature to think too much on unlikely loss? Or have we simply trained ourselves to, the bad moments from thousands of years steeped in genetic memory?
Do you ever see the aftermath of a car crash and reflexively wonder how the impact felt?
The man who survived that crash, two years prior, in a similar Lotus F1 car. In an era when roll bars were not mandatory and polo helmets were thought enough. (Lotus 18, Dutch Grand Prix, 1960.) Heritage Images/Getty Images
I occasionally find myself wondering if my brain was accidentally built with too many empathy cells. This flattering notion would probably leave me a little too impressed with myself if I didn’t also regularly think I was born with too few. (Big mouth here. Doesn’t always spit the best words for the moment.)
My wife, a kind and perceptive person, knows writers are glued together with self-loathing. She once suggested, without looking up from her book, that this empathy questioning is probably just evidence that I am something like normal.
Ah, I said, thank you.
At least, she said, in this respect.
You’re funny, I said.
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Think about the impact itself. So many parts moved around. This is—was—a 1962 Lotus 18/21 Formula 1 car. Two years prior, it began life as a 1960 Lotus 18 Formula 1 car. By the morning of the race that killed it, it wore several updates, including an English V-8 and the sleeker bodywork of Lotus’s 1961 Formula 1 car, the Type 21.
Look at the seat. The radiator, that rectangular bit at right. The dashboard hangs outside the car, limp; those two black cylinders are gauges.
The dash location would suggest that impact force caused the steering wheel—removed by the time of this photo—to end up near the driver’s right elbow.
An assumption we can unfortunately prove.
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This image is lightly graphic. It is worth sharing, however, for what it illustrates. As we noted earlier, the driver survived and recovered. This image was printed in English newspapers during a relatively conservative time in a relatively conservative country. On top of that, the subject did not find it disturbing.
“The photographs that were taken after the accident, with me trapped in the car,” he wrote in his book, My Racing Life, “look rather lurid, but in fact I find myself able to look at them quite dispassionately. After all, I knew nothing about it. I was trapped in the car for about 45 minutes, I gather, because the chassis had completely folded up over me.”
It has to be normal, to look at that picture and think about the hit.
By extension, it must be normal to imagine falling from the top of the world, right?
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When this picture was taken, on the night of April 23, 1962, Stirling Moss was 32 years old and unconscious. The ambulance in the background had just carried him 60 miles, from a track called Goodwood, in West Sussex, to London’s Atkinson Morley Hospital. That morning, he had been an international star at the height of his powers, one of the sharpest and most naturally talented drivers alive.
His crash made international news, even the papers in America, where no one cared about such things. And though he recovered fully, his life would never be the same.
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Born in 1929, Moss first raced a car in 1947. He was 17, a former show-jumper of horses. His dentist father, Alfred, had once driven in an Indy 500. At first, he tried to discourage his son. He had hoped the boy would be a dentist. Then the talent became clear. Just a few years later, the younger Moss would be a national hero.
From 1948 to 1962, Stirling Moss started 529 races. He finished first in 212 of them.
Two hundred and twelve.
As a young man in his apartment, 21 years old and already famous, packing for a tour of Europe. He would enter 48 races over the next six months. Getty Images
The tally is staggering. The man won 16 Formula 1 grands prix but also sports-car landmarks like the 12 Hours of Sebring, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the annual 1000-kilometer race at the old Nürburgring.
Perhaps the brightest spot on his resume is an overall win in the “old” Mille Miglia. A cross-country, thousand-mile, open-road race that ran from 1927 to 1957 and ended only when the Italian government grew weary from the body count and outlawed the whole thing. (Fifty-six drivers and spectators dead in 30 years.)
Imagine: A flat-out, nonstop competition, basically a lap of midcentury Italy, with factory teams and the best drivers on earth, over narrow two-lanes and cobblestone village streets. The Mille was said to draw more than 5 million spectators across the country. In 1955, they lined roads in throngs, no real barriers or crowd control, watching as Moss repeatedly cranked a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR to more than 170 mph. He finished in record time: 10 hours, 7 minutes, and 48 seconds, an average speed of 98.5 mph.
That last bit is impressive at a glance. Think on it even a smidge more, you maybe lose your mind a little.
The Mille Miglia, May 1, 1955. Moss and his navigator, the journalist Denis Jenkinson, on the Futa Pass, in the Apennines, 3000 feet up. Getty Images
Mille crowds and a 300-horse, open-piped, straight-eight Mercedes at full yawp. Getty Images
The finish, after ten hours, a deafening and filthy lap of Italy. Getty Images
Success in racing has always hung both on car and driver; Moss himself always said that the Mercedes made the win possible. Even the likes of Ayrton Senna could not land an F1 championship at the wheel of a Toleman. (What’s a Toleman, you ask? Exactly.)
Top-flight racing cars can today be separated by as little as hundredths or thousandths of a second, and they do not make huge speed gains from year to year. At the risk of gross understatement, the 1950s were different. Technology evolved far quicker; motorsport was still more art than science, but the balance was shifting. Cars grew noticeably faster every season. No country or designer held an advantage for long.
In a Maserati 300S at Sebring, March of 1957. Note the bare arms; it was hot. Getty Images
With stringback gloves and a cork-lined helmet, 1955. Getty Images
Moss was staunchly patriotic; he preferred to race cars built in his homeland. (“It is better to lose honorably in a British car than to win in a foreign one,” he once said.) Exceptions were made—he was at one point a Mercedes-Benz factory driver, he loved the Maserati 300S, and so on—but that preference bit him more often than not.
Imagine saying no to a Ferrari, then driving the wheels off some slower car while some lesser talent warms the seat you turned down and leaves you behind. Imagine, too, racking up those 212 wins without always having the fastest car.
In a six-cylinder, 270-hp, 1400-pound Maserati 250F, 1956, the German Grand Prix. Getty Images
The inside of a 250F Moss drove the same year. Note the presence of air bags, a roll hoop, a safety harness, a HANS device, and a carbon-fiber shell seat. (Or not.) Getty Images
It’s also worth noting that Moss ran at the front, in some of the fastest and most dangerous machines then built, in an age when scores of drivers around the world died at the wheel every season, in cars all but absent driver protection, in an era where safety gear was so laughable that a cork-lined polo helmet was often seen as overkill.
That he survived is remarkable; that he was so good is impressive. That he survived while being that good, while racing that often, life so regularly in the odds? Astonishing.
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As with any gathering of stats, there are caveats. This is not Pete Rose, however, and the asterisk only improves the man.
Take those 212 wins and 529 starts. Two hundred and twelve divided by 529 is 0.400. Forty percent.
Where else do we see a single member of a team put on the spot to deliver results?
In major-league baseball, Wikipedia says, a season batting average of 30 percent or higher is “considered to be excellent.” The site calls an average greater than 40 percent “a nearly unachievable goal.”
The start of the 1953 French Grand Prix. Moss is in the Cooper-Alta in the left lane, car 36. Those are public roads. Getty Images
Ah, you say! That’s not a level comparison! Baseball isn’t 1950s road racing.
True. There is a difference.
A hitter at the plate is not asked to maintain hours of peak performance in the sustained, 120-degree heat of an uninsulated metal cockpit, or in driving rain. They are not required to endure those conditions without water or food. Nor must they perform in close and often deafening proximity to other hitters, reacting to the boxer-like feints and defenses of those individuals while knowing an error from anyone involved could unavoidably maim or kill.
There is no mental strain from concentrating on car placement to the nearest inch at, say, 130 mph. While engaged in an activity that has recently killed several of your friends. While often mere feet from trees and fences and other landscape furniture. While thinking (but not too much) about the close proximity of spectators and how any one of a dozen small mistakes on your part could at any point end you or them or both.
Phil Hill, America’s first F1 World Champion and a Ferrari factory driver, after winning the 1961 Italian Grand Prix and locking the championship. His teammate, Wolfgang von Trips, had crashed during the race, killing himself and 14 spectators. Ferrari did not pay Hill a salary, and he did not learn of von Trips’s death until close to this moment, still in laurels. Grieving and racked with survivor’s guilt, he wept. Getty Images
Bats do not often suffer unpredictable and game-ending mechanical failures, and even when they do, those failures do not take a hitter’s life. Nor does each season ask that the hitter choose a new bat from a fresh round of unproven designs. Choosing the wrong bat for even a single game does not alter the hitter’s chance of success, or fame, or survival, nor does it change the odds on his continued presence in the sport.
On top of that, MLB players make a good living. Some F1 drivers of the 1950s and 1960s, even the champions, held day jobs to pay the rent. Moss did well, but he was an exception, a star whose fame and success brought sponsor deals and eventual knighthood.
Fine, you say: What about the current era?
Lewis Hamilton, one of the greatest drivers of his generation, being interviewed in 2012, in the paddock of the United States Grand Prix, Austin, Texas. Sam Smith
We once used this space to discuss modern Formula 1 star Lewis Hamilton. At time of writing, HAM has started 310 F1 races and won 103. Thirty-three percent. Moss’s 16 grand-prix wins came over 66 starts—24 percent.
Numbers are the least interesting part of any sport. Still, a quick internet search will give you a list of all-time Formula 1 win ratios.
Those lists are inherently misleading, hung as they are on many variables—politics, engineering, funding, the perpetually changing number of races per season, whether a driver was lucky enough to sign with the right team at the right time, whether F1 was their sole focus, and so on. The closer you get to today, the more those variables weigh the odds.
Moss in a Lotus, 1961 Monaco Grand Prix. It was hot, so they took off the car’s side panels for ventilation, exposing his legs. Logical. Sam Smith
Lewis Hamilton in a Mercedes, 2022 Dutch Grand Prix. A spaceship next to the Lotus, and a wholly different world, yet we still compare them. AFP via Getty Images
Still, it’s fun to look. Here’s one for reference. Hamilton is currently fourth. Moss is ninth. Jim Clark, a personal hero, is third. Senna is eighth. Michael Schumacher is fifth.The Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio, a Moss contemporary and mentor, is first. From 1952 to 1958, he notched 24 wins in 52 starts. Forty-seven percent.
So many differences between eras. With Moss, Fangio is probably the best comparison. He was just as versatile, yet unlike Moss, he did not carry loyalties when choosing a car. For the most part, he simply drove the fastest thing on offer. He was also lucky enough to end his career when he wished, quitting in his prime, neither too early nor too late.
Moss, 22 years old, and Fangio, then 40, before a race at Goodwood, 1952. A fierce talent at his peak, and another almost there. Getty Images
Such a long run. The two men were friends. Moss saw Fangio as his superior, a talent he couldn’t match. The older man, however, thought Moss his equal, a concept the latter never quite agreed with.
Fangio began racing in his home country in the 1930s. When the F1 world championship launched in 1950, he was already a seasoned veteran. He won five F1 titles, then retired in 1958, at 46.
The “old man,” as he was known, in his second to last season, Morocco, 1957. Getty Images
Laughing student, retired mentor, the Nürburgring, 1961. Getty Images
The story of how Fangio arrived at that decision is telling. He would later confess that he had known without doubt when it was time, could point to the exact moment he made the choice.
You must always strive to be the best, but you must never believe that you are.
—J.M. Fangio
The 1957 German Grand Prix was held at the old Nürburgring Nordschliefe, or “North Loop”—then as now, basically just a long, one-way road in the mountains. Fangio qualified on pole, starting first. By lap 13, he was more than 30 seconds ahead of the car in second. He came into the pits for tires and fuel. Mechanics botched the stop, taking far too long. By the time he left the pits, he had fallen to third, now more than a minute behind second place. In his head, a breaker tripped. He drove as he never had, a man possessed.
Fangio, leading at the Nürburgring, German Grand Prix, Maserati 250F Formula 1 car, 1957. The day he went above and beyond, then realized he had to quit. Getty Images
Remember that the old ’Ring was and remains one of the fastest tracks ever built. Fangio’s pole lap of 9 minutes and 25 seconds translated to an average speed of 89 mph. This on a 14-mile circuit with more than 170 corners, mostly bordered by hedges and trees, on treaded tires about as wide as your palm.
After that botched stop, he went even faster, resetting the lap record again and again. By the checker, he had found seven seconds under pole. An eternity.
Same race, same man and car. The Maser in the “ditch” of the ’Ring’s famous Karussel, crowd looking on. Getty Images
“If in one turn I was using second gear,” he said, “then I went into third. When it was third, I used fourth . . . there is much more risk, this is much less safe, but you go faster . . . I’ve never been a spectacular racer, but I did things I had never done in my life.”
He won, of course. Some stories simply end as we want them to. And yet, in the process, he forced himself into a different place. Whatever he saw and felt there was too much. He retired the following year.
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I like to imagine what might have happened had either man kept going. If Fangio hadn’t stepped down, and if Moss hadn’t crashed. Or perhaps what either man might have done when younger, for better or worse, had they known what life would bring.
When Moss crashed in 1962, at Goodwood, his life turned. He and a raft of other F1 regulars were competing in a non-points race for Formula 1 cars, in front of packed stands.
I raced at Goodwood once, several years ago; like many British circuits, the track lives on the site of an old RAF airfield. A quick lap there is heartbreakingly fluid—fast corner after fast corner, nothing but rhythm, equal parts risk and drug.
A modern Goodwood track map; the circuit is essentially unchanged since its 1950s heyday. Note the airfield in the center, which is still in use. Goodwood Road & Racing
Moss in Goodwood’s Woodcote corner in ’63, mere laps before the crash. GPL / Fred Taylor
A Ferrari exits the same corner in the modern day. Goodwood Road & Racing
Moss’s Lotus flung into the grass at St. Mary’s, a quick and narrow left-hander on the circuit’s west side. Reliable eyewitness accounts are rare, and Moss himself never remembered the moment. Contemporary reports suggested a host of causes, including mechanical failure and the actions of other drivers, but he never assigned blame.
What we know for sure: He was going around 120 mph, in a cigar-shaped, 700-pound confection of thin steel tube and fiberglass, when he hit a grassy bank head-on.
I had pretty serious brain injuries, and my face was badly crushed, particularly the left eye socket and cheekbone. My left arm and leg were broken, the leg in two places. I was paralyzed down one side for [six months], and when I started to wake up, I didn’t know how to speak.
When the marshals reached him, he was alive but unconscious, choking on a piece of chewing gum. As he was cut out of the car, photographers swarmed. An X-ray later showed that the impact had physically detached the right side of his brain from his skull. The coma that resulted would last a month.
Goodwood’s Madgwick corner during the race. Note the sizable crowd. Most accounts say there was a collective and sizable gasp when Moss shot off the track. PA Images via Getty Images
England fell into a state of national worry. The press prepared obituaries. In America, Time magazine assembled a Moss cover feature, to be run in the event of his death.
When I had my accident I was 32 years old, and I had been racing for 14 years. I was driving as well as I had ever done, maybe better. Had the accident not happened, I firmly believe I would have continued for at least another 14 years, and probably much more.
—From My Racing Life
Slightly more than one year later, in May of 1963, after months of rehab, after learning to talk and walk again, Moss returned to Goodwood. He drove down from his London flat early in the morning, then climbed into a Lotus 19 sports racer and set off, on a wet and empty track, to test. He had not been in a race car since the accident.
Testing at Goodwood, May of ’63, a year later, to see if he still had it. He didn’t. Getty Images
I would describe that test, but my efforts wouldn’t be a patch on what Robert Edwards wrote in his excellent Stirling Moss: The Authorized Biography:
He drove the damp circuit at lap speeds that were acceptable . . . but without being particularly startling by his own measure, which mattered more to him than any absolute—he was not racing, after all. Passing St. Mary’s, he felt absolutely nothing.
He realized, with a dawning sense of horror, that . . . all the flowing instincts, the unthinking balancing, unbalancing, and rebalancing of the car . . . were absent. To the uninformed observer, the performance was probably impressive; to Stirling himself, it lacked everything which he had come to love about the sport and his own place in it.
In his London office, retired, May ’63. Getty Images
Rehab, June ’62. Getty Images
Gone too was the schoolboyish enthusiasm for the sheer, fierce joy of it. If his relationship with a racing car had once been a sensuous dance, it was now more like a vaguely recalled hop with a mere acquaintance . . . a disconnecting experience . . . he even spun the car at the chicane.
This was a devastating revelation for him. But perhaps more objectively, Stirling finally realized that this was life in the real world; this was what it was like for everyone else. That the massive advantages he had unconsciously enjoyed for so long were now a thing of the past, alien to him and probably impossible to recover.
He was now as other men. It was a terrifying prospect.
We should not feel sorry for him; for all he lost, he still felt deeply fortunate and did not truck in self-pity. The rest of the man’s life was apparently full and happy. He kept busy with various business commitments and enjoyed the continuing evolution of racing and technology, all the way to his late-life presence on social media.
He even returned to the track eventually, dabbling in modern historic racing. Which is, if you are not familiar, best described as old cars on modern tracks, something like the old days but also nothing like them at all.
In a Lotus, Dutch Grand Prix, 1961. Getty Images
At the 1000-kilometer Nürburgring sports-car race, 1961. Getty Images
Years later, when he retired from driving at high speed, it was for good, he said, a firm stop to green-flag activity. He made the announcement on Radio Le Mans, on June 9, 2011. He was competing in a Le Mans Legends race, he said, and had scared himself that afternoon. He was 81. He is still widely regarded as the greatest F1 driver to have not won a championship.
I have known people occasionally moved to inaction by the likelihood of a worst-case end. That quality does not make them lesser. If I understand that feeling, it is only because I have fought the instinct my whole life.
We all lose things, and we never know when that will happen. The only practical path forward, I think, is to be clear-eyed about the potential outcomes of the risks you are willing to take, embracing reality without letting fear slow things down too much.
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The first person to fly faster than the speed of sound was an American test pilot named Chuck Yeager. His life was steeped in risk. You do what you can for as long as you can, he once said, and when you finally can’t, you do the next best thing—you back up, but you don’t give up.
After that horrible accident, Moss got back in the car, to try. Because of course he did. It is, in the end, all we can ever do.
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I saw him behind the pits at Sebring the year after. He was shirtless and tanned, with a trim beard, laughing and talking to a girl. He went to light a cigarette and could not operate the lighter. The cosmos reached down and touched me and I thought, Wow.
A very wordy way to say some are changed by crashes and some are not.
Stirling loved to drive but not enough to override his fear of crashing again.
Earnhardt and Foyt bot suffered major crashes and returned to win not long after as their drive to race was greater than crashing again.
Earnhardt a tough as nails competitor won the pole at the Glen with a broken collar bone in a near fatal crash the week before. Then he stepped out of a car a week later in near tears because he could not race.
Years earlier he hid in his car with a broken leg so he could drive Talladega. .
There is no shame in losing your nerve in fact it may just be the intelligence side winning out. But like they say in racing there are two kinds of drivers. Those who have hit the wall and those who will hit the wall.
Ah, I’m sorry the length didn’t work for you! We strive with these posts to tell a story and let it breathe, discussing universal notions.
Interesting point you make about crashing and simply “not wanting” to go back—I wish it were that simple! Moss had, for example, crashed heavily before, and with significant consequences and rehab. He was never really afraid of getting back in, his actions made that pretty clear, unfortunately.
The aftermath of the career-ending Goodwood crash has been described as… something else, by both him and others, and doctors. The way traumatic brain injuries can change anyone, really. I’ve been around and known, pretty well, more than a few people with TBIs, pro drivers and people in other fields. The complications that can follow from heavy concussions and TBIs in general are, even now, not really understood. From the rash of CTE occurrences in NASCAR drivers and football players to a dozen other types of result—personality, motor control, all of it. It’s terrifying stuff.
The piece wasn’t too long, a simply brilliant piece of wordcraft that did far more than tell the story of whether Stirling Moss lost his nerve. Unfortunately, some have a narrow view of life and consequently of fine writing, their blindeye and their loss.
Many of us would like to do the things the great drivers do. The difference is THEY DO IT! Better to have tried and done, than to have never given it a shot. Deepest respect to the greats. I think it was Steve McQueen in the movie LeMans who said “motor racing is a bloodsport. Bad things can happen to you, and then they can happen again”.
BTW, wonderful writing!!
I once read an article about Stirling in a race. It was raining on this day and Stirling was leading the race with a few laps to the finish. A young racer had been slowly catching Stirling as the race progressed. As the young racer came within a close visual distance to Stirling, he noticed that Stirling’s car was sometimes losing traction in the corners, just barely! The young racer thought to himself, if the great Stirling Moss is having this much trouble racing, then I must slow a bit of I will surely wreck. On the last lap the young racer made his move, but it was too late and Stirling was able to hold him off and win the race. Many years later, Stirling revealed to the young racer that he, Stirling, was only faking the traction problem so that he, Stirling, could win with a sub par car.
I think after reading this, I may just go back to the shelf that has Sir Stirling’s book and read it again. We sometimes forget the sheer peril of those who raced before us
I have been reading about WW2 fighter pilots. I see a similar trait in race drivers.
Some pilots are just absolute no fear even after getting shot down and injured. They get back and get back in a plane and are back at full throttle. While other pilots that are good take more into consideration and just never are the same.
It has nothing to do with flying skills but more to personality of some that just have no fear and are willing to go to where others fear to tread.
That survival element is just stronger in some than others.
Might also note those with out that preservation element also died of old age vs in a crash in their prime.
Some like Foyt survived dispute this trait. The crash at Riverside in 65 would have been his last if not for Parnelli Jones stopping and clearing the dirt blocking his breathing.
The was not counting the sling and indy crashes as well flipping a dozer in the water and killer bee attack. We know now why Mrs Foyt stepped in and said no more.
Well put, hyperv6. During WWII my father was a test pilot in the B-29 program. As is well-known, the program was on a fast track, so the level of risk was even higher than already existed. He made test flights out of Eglin AFB, usually flying north to the Midwest and back. There were many glitches, but none as bad as the virtual certainty that one or more of the four engines would catch on fire. (Engine fires were still a serious problem even after the plane was put into action.) My father’s best friend, I’ll call him “Bill”, was also a test pilot. After a time, he became one of many pilots in the program to have a serious nervous breakdown. My father was there when Bill was put in a padded cell. My father badly wanted to see combat, but it was not to happen. Ironically, he was killed in 1948 in a plane crash, so I never got to talk to him about his experiences. Bill lived on. He was a successful businessman in a nearby Southern state. My mother kept up with him. During the 1990s she and I took a tape recorder and asked Bill to tell us what he remembered about my father during the war. He included the story of his breakdown. To say that it still haunted him would be a rash understatement. I’ve now lived long enough to know that some wounds never heal; you just live with them. Moss was one of my heroes when I was young, as was Fangio. Sam, as always, fully engages both my mind and my heart; I am glad that Moss and Fangio both lived, but like you and the others here, I feel most for those who died doing what they loved and for the ones who lived on wishing so intensely that it had not happened.
Thanks for sharing the story of your dad and “Bill”, Dan+Hise – well written and compelling. I would like to add a personal thought to your last sentence: better to die doing what you love than almost any other way!
Because my father was still in the Air Force and on duty when he died, I was able to benefit from the National Defense Act of the late 50s, in the form of a grant to attend college: $110 a month for nine months for four years. Yes, this was definitely pre-inflation. I also got a graduate fellowship under the same legislation. Thanks, Dad. Thanks, United States.
Great story. My father was in the Air Force also and told me about the pilots that just had no fear of death.
I also find it in some of the history books of WW1 and WW2 along with Korea and Nam.
Back then it was a different breed.
Back then they would stare the other pilot down. Today they short a middle and if they even see the plane they did something wrong. Technology has changed dog fights much like F1.
Great article! I’d submit that the physical injuries, especially to the brain, may have had as much to do with the lack of ability to return to form as anything else. It also may have been unrealistic to expect an immediate ability to jump in the car and be able to be on top of one’s game; but it’s a moot point.
What exemplifies his greatness is that Sir Stirling is still revered after so many years.
Sorry I am of the school of internet stories are a good read, but a good story is a book.
It is common one crash is not enough. Some it is two some it is never. The drive to compete is so strong that they are willing to risk all.
I have noticed in recent year many drivers walking away earlier. I call it the Earnhardt Effect. These guys today have made their money early and have families. They want to see them grow up.
Years ago many drivers did not eat if they did not race. In other cases it was just that thrill of the drive.
Back then you really had to want to drive and risk all in F1. Odds were good you may not finish the season not crippled or dead.
When drivers were not wearing seat belt hopping to get tossed out of a burning magnesium car that is telling.
I give a lot of credit to guys like Ernie Irvin and Dale Jr to walk away. Even Jr yet today hears that call to drive again. But at least he limits the risks.
Great story. One point seemed a bit weird and stuck out to me… “They aren’t really interested in annexing your Sudetenland or going Mongol on the masses.” The political class clearly has no such boundaries an would willingly do anything if it benefits them, even at your expense.
Sam: It is such a joy to read any of your columns, but your In the Moment columns are particularly compelling. The captivating images are a perfect anchor to your gifted ability to tell a story. Describing this column as very wordy is equivalent to suggesting Mozart’s music contains too many notes.
Terrific story. I always rooted for Sir Stirling – in those days, if you paid any attention at all, you knew he was simply the best of them all.
I saw him behind the pits at Sebring the year after. He was shirtless and tanned, with a trim beard, laughing and talking to a girl. He went to light a cigarette and could not operate the lighter. The cosmos reached down and touched me and I thought, Wow.
Sam, your writing is always a gift. Thank you.
A very wordy way to say some are changed by crashes and some are not.
Stirling loved to drive but not enough to override his fear of crashing again.
Earnhardt and Foyt bot suffered major crashes and returned to win not long after as their drive to race was greater than crashing again.
Earnhardt a tough as nails competitor won the pole at the Glen with a broken collar bone in a near fatal crash the week before. Then he stepped out of a car a week later in near tears because he could not race.
Years earlier he hid in his car with a broken leg so he could drive Talladega. .
There is no shame in losing your nerve in fact it may just be the intelligence side winning out. But like they say in racing there are two kinds of drivers. Those who have hit the wall and those who will hit the wall.
How they respond then is just a personal choice.
Ah, I’m sorry the length didn’t work for you! We strive with these posts to tell a story and let it breathe, discussing universal notions.
Interesting point you make about crashing and simply “not wanting” to go back—I wish it were that simple! Moss had, for example, crashed heavily before, and with significant consequences and rehab. He was never really afraid of getting back in, his actions made that pretty clear, unfortunately.
The aftermath of the career-ending Goodwood crash has been described as… something else, by both him and others, and doctors. The way traumatic brain injuries can change anyone, really. I’ve been around and known, pretty well, more than a few people with TBIs, pro drivers and people in other fields. The complications that can follow from heavy concussions and TBIs in general are, even now, not really understood. From the rash of CTE occurrences in NASCAR drivers and football players to a dozen other types of result—personality, motor control, all of it. It’s terrifying stuff.
Spot on.
The piece wasn’t too long, a simply brilliant piece of wordcraft that did far more than tell the story of whether Stirling Moss lost his nerve. Unfortunately, some have a narrow view of life and consequently of fine writing, their blindeye and their loss.
Many of us would like to do the things the great drivers do. The difference is THEY DO IT! Better to have tried and done, than to have never given it a shot. Deepest respect to the greats. I think it was Steve McQueen in the movie LeMans who said “motor racing is a bloodsport. Bad things can happen to you, and then they can happen again”.
BTW, wonderful writing!!
I once read an article about Stirling in a race. It was raining on this day and Stirling was leading the race with a few laps to the finish. A young racer had been slowly catching Stirling as the race progressed. As the young racer came within a close visual distance to Stirling, he noticed that Stirling’s car was sometimes losing traction in the corners, just barely! The young racer thought to himself, if the great Stirling Moss is having this much trouble racing, then I must slow a bit of I will surely wreck. On the last lap the young racer made his move, but it was too late and Stirling was able to hold him off and win the race. Many years later, Stirling revealed to the young racer that he, Stirling, was only faking the traction problem so that he, Stirling, could win with a sub par car.
I think you are referring to Innes Ireland.
I think after reading this, I may just go back to the shelf that has Sir Stirling’s book and read it again. We sometimes forget the sheer peril of those who raced before us
I have been reading about WW2 fighter pilots. I see a similar trait in race drivers.
Some pilots are just absolute no fear even after getting shot down and injured. They get back and get back in a plane and are back at full throttle. While other pilots that are good take more into consideration and just never are the same.
It has nothing to do with flying skills but more to personality of some that just have no fear and are willing to go to where others fear to tread.
That survival element is just stronger in some than others.
Might also note those with out that preservation element also died of old age vs in a crash in their prime.
Some like Foyt survived dispute this trait. The crash at Riverside in 65 would have been his last if not for Parnelli Jones stopping and clearing the dirt blocking his breathing.
The was not counting the sling and indy crashes as well flipping a dozer in the water and killer bee attack. We know now why Mrs Foyt stepped in and said no more.
Well put, hyperv6. During WWII my father was a test pilot in the B-29 program. As is well-known, the program was on a fast track, so the level of risk was even higher than already existed. He made test flights out of Eglin AFB, usually flying north to the Midwest and back. There were many glitches, but none as bad as the virtual certainty that one or more of the four engines would catch on fire. (Engine fires were still a serious problem even after the plane was put into action.) My father’s best friend, I’ll call him “Bill”, was also a test pilot. After a time, he became one of many pilots in the program to have a serious nervous breakdown. My father was there when Bill was put in a padded cell. My father badly wanted to see combat, but it was not to happen. Ironically, he was killed in 1948 in a plane crash, so I never got to talk to him about his experiences. Bill lived on. He was a successful businessman in a nearby Southern state. My mother kept up with him. During the 1990s she and I took a tape recorder and asked Bill to tell us what he remembered about my father during the war. He included the story of his breakdown. To say that it still haunted him would be a rash understatement. I’ve now lived long enough to know that some wounds never heal; you just live with them. Moss was one of my heroes when I was young, as was Fangio. Sam, as always, fully engages both my mind and my heart; I am glad that Moss and Fangio both lived, but like you and the others here, I feel most for those who died doing what they loved and for the ones who lived on wishing so intensely that it had not happened.
Thanks for sharing the story of your dad and “Bill”, Dan+Hise – well written and compelling. I would like to add a personal thought to your last sentence: better to die doing what you love than almost any other way!
I agree, old son.
Because my father was still in the Air Force and on duty when he died, I was able to benefit from the National Defense Act of the late 50s, in the form of a grant to attend college: $110 a month for nine months for four years. Yes, this was definitely pre-inflation. I also got a graduate fellowship under the same legislation. Thanks, Dad. Thanks, United States.
Great story. My father was in the Air Force also and told me about the pilots that just had no fear of death.
I also find it in some of the history books of WW1 and WW2 along with Korea and Nam.
Back then it was a different breed.
Back then they would stare the other pilot down. Today they short a middle and if they even see the plane they did something wrong. Technology has changed dog fights much like F1.
Sam Smith = must read.
Beautifully written, as always, Sam!
Wonderful article about racing and about life. Thanks very much.
I seem to remember that Roger Maris drove a beer truck in the off season.
Great article! I’d submit that the physical injuries, especially to the brain, may have had as much to do with the lack of ability to return to form as anything else. It also may have been unrealistic to expect an immediate ability to jump in the car and be able to be on top of one’s game; but it’s a moot point.
What exemplifies his greatness is that Sir Stirling is still revered after so many years.
Stirling Moss was a true sportsman. He competed honorably ,unlike the current so called world champion.
Sorry I am of the school of internet stories are a good read, but a good story is a book.
It is common one crash is not enough. Some it is two some it is never. The drive to compete is so strong that they are willing to risk all.
I have noticed in recent year many drivers walking away earlier. I call it the Earnhardt Effect. These guys today have made their money early and have families. They want to see them grow up.
Years ago many drivers did not eat if they did not race. In other cases it was just that thrill of the drive.
Back then you really had to want to drive and risk all in F1. Odds were good you may not finish the season not crippled or dead.
When drivers were not wearing seat belt hopping to get tossed out of a burning magnesium car that is telling.
I give a lot of credit to guys like Ernie Irvin and Dale Jr to walk away. Even Jr yet today hears that call to drive again. But at least he limits the risks.
Great story. One point seemed a bit weird and stuck out to me… “They aren’t really interested in annexing your Sudetenland or going Mongol on the masses.” The political class clearly has no such boundaries an would willingly do anything if it benefits them, even at your expense.
Forced EV’s anyone?
Sam: It is such a joy to read any of your columns, but your In the Moment columns are particularly compelling. The captivating images are a perfect anchor to your gifted ability to tell a story. Describing this column as very wordy is equivalent to suggesting Mozart’s music contains too many notes.
Bingo!