FOR FARNHAM-based journalist Doug Nye, Stirling Moss was his boyhood hero. Later in life, one of the world’s best-known faces in motor racing became a good friend – they worked on a number of books together and many magazine features. Doug remembers Stirling as ‘unfailingly friendly and helpful’ – so writing this tribute to his old friend was particularly tough...

* By Doug Nye

For five years, from 1952 to 1958, the greatest British racing drivers of that era – rising towards dominance on the world stage – were Stirling Moss, who died, aged 90, on Sunday, and The Farnham Flyer Mike Hawthorn of the TT Garage, then located in East Street.

Stirling Moss became the acknowledged standard-setting racing driver of his era, winning hundreds of races in dozens of different cars in a time when no chance to race would be ignored, whether it was Formula 1, 2 or 3, sports cars, saloon cars, Grand Touring cars.

Moss and Hawthorn both were bold, brave, dyed-in-the-wool racers with a capital ‘R’.

Moss would never settle back to win ‘at the slowest possible speed’ as his great mentor – five-times world champion Juan Manuel Fangio – would advise.

In contrast, Stirling would say: “No, I just wanted to race. I just wanted to go out there and have a real old tear-up.”

What driver is most like him today? Lewis Hamilton – absolutely cut from the self-same cloth.

Today when sports statistics get so bandied about in media and pub bar alike, much is made of Moss never having won the Formula 1 Drivers’ World Championship.

The truth is, it never mattered. From 1958 to 1962, every rival driver worldwide would look first at Moss’s lap times to check how ‘The Maestro’ had done.

He was the standard setter of that time, a global superstar, absolutely Mr Motor Racing by reputation – and by deed.

He finished second in the F1 Drivers’ Championship four times, 1955 to 1958, and third three more times, from 1959 to 1961. But the measure of the sportsman is found in 1958 when Farnham’s Mike Hawthorn pipped him to the world title by just a single, solitary point.

In that year’s Portuguese Grand Prix, run on a typically-hazardous street circuit of the time, in Oporto, Moss was unbeatable in his British-built Vanwall car.

Mike Hawthorn was driving for Ferrari of Italy – and he drove in Portugal in mental torment. His great friend and team-mate Peter Collins had been killed when his Ferrari had crashed in the preceding German Grand Prix.

Earlier that year another Ferrari team-mate, the Italian Luigi Musso, had crashed fatally during the French GP, which Hawthorn had won.

In that Portuguese race, Mike Hawthorn led for Ferrari but was caught and passed by Moss in the sleek British racing green Vanwall.

Mike had some brake trouble with his Ferrari and lost time in a pit stop.

After rejoining, he ripped back through the field. Moss led comfortably and had set the fastest race lap, which in those days scored an extra World Championship point.

Stirling Moss later recalled how... “During this fightback Mike bettered my fastest lap. I was signalled ‘HAW-REC’ meaning Mike had set record lap, which unfortunately I misread as ‘HAW-REG’ meaning ‘Hawthorn – Regular’.

“I knew he’d made a pit stop so it never occurred to me his car could have been going so fast.

“I lapped Mike just before the end, but the sight of his face as I did so softened my hard old heart so I backed off and let him unlap himself.

“To qualify for second place he had to complete that final lap, but he promptly spun his car and stalled.

“I came upon his stalled car on my slowing-down lap after taking the chequered flag and saw him struggling to push-start it in the direction of the race, uphill.

“I slowed beside him and bawled ‘Push it downhill, you’ll never start the bloody thing that way.’

“Which he did, ensuring his second place.

“But under the regulations one could be disqualified for proceeding against race direction, and Mike was hauled before the stewards for having done just that to restart downhill.

“But I appeared on his behalf. I testified he had not proceeded against the race direction because he was on the pavement at the time, not on the race circuit.

“Consequently his second place was confirmed plus the extra point for fastest lap.

“Having misread that signal really irritated me! I am sure I could have taken that record back if only I had realised. But I felt I’d done the right thing by standing up for him.

“But that extra point for fastest lap cost me the championship. Dammit!” – and Stirling would laugh. He was that kind of man.

I remember one time at the Goodwood Festival when a lady in the crowd on the fence asked me if I’d get Stirling to sign her little boy’s programme for her.

He went over and had a chat and did so, and she thanked him profusely for having taken the trouble.

“Not at all, my dear,” he replied. “This is my day job and this is my office now...” and he shook her hand and went back to his grand prix car. Mr Motor Racing.

A noble sportsman – and to my mind, until last Sunday, The Greatest Living Englishman.