By the time Sir Stirling Moss was 29, he was the fastest racing driver in the world. It was the time of ‘The Boy’.
Through the 1950s, he’d established himself as the foil to the great Juan Manuel Fangio, and for a while, after the Argentinian retired, no one else matched Moss’s scintillating speed and preternatural feel in a racing car. For some reason, Moss’s sublime gifts seemed to be amplified in a sportscar, perhaps more than any other discipline, though he was supreme in them all.
In 1959, where our story focuses, he belonged to Aston Martin. This was the year it all came together for industrialist owner David Brown, whose 10-year pursuit of Le Mans glory culminated perfectly.
Moss was a prolific diarist. And while we know overall victory in that year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans was achieved by Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby, Moss’s final Le Mans for the David Brown Racing Department, viewed through his own lens, is fascinating.
Moss and his teammate ‘Jolly’ Jack Fairman had won the preceding World Sportscar Championship round – the Nürburgring 1,000km – and were coming into Le Mans as hot favourites (if they could beat the much-fancied Ferraris). That race in Germany stood as one of Moss’s favourites. He loved the challenge of the ’Ring, and yet he disliked Le Mans.
“I wouldn’t drive there by choice,” he noted. “I think it’s far too dangerous, simply because of the slow cars and inexperienced drivers.” But that wasn’t his only issue… he was “needled” by the “cock-eyed scrutineering”, the “overblown publicity” and whether the prize of racing for “honour and glory” was worth the expense incurred by manufacturers. Moss also disliked having to limit his revs for the sake of reliability… He did, however, believe that the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO)’s organisation of the event was second to none.
While racing requires an intoxicating cocktail of pioneering spirit and devil-may-care attitude, sober preparation is the elixir of success. In this, Aston Martin was always ahead of the opposition.
“Aston Martin is one of the best organised teams in Europe,” noted Moss. “They approach every event with military precision.” Part of general manager John Wyer’s master plan was to base the team in the peaceful town of La Chartre-sur-le-Loir, 25 miles south of the circuit, at the now famous Hôtel de France. There the drivers would “prepare for the marathon in peace and quiet, un-tempted by the fleshpots of the city”.
Drivers being drivers, they simply turned to the hotel’s table football for serious competition. Indeed, Moss described the resident pinball machine as an “expensive operation” as he spent hours trying to beat the million-plus high score. The matter was only settled when the game expired in smoke, not long after Shelby’s son Pat had posted a new top score.
Aston’s precise movement schedule (which the marque still has today!) was drawn up by team manager Reg Parnell’s secretary Jill Harris. This noted all arrangements and vehicle movements, including the fact that Fairman and Shelby drove to the race in a Lagonda Shooting Brake.
Moss was preoccupied by the hot weather all week, though this came back to bite him, quite literally, when he lost his front teeth during a dip in the adjacent river. “This was one of my un-wiser steps,” he wrote. “I put through a call to London and told my secretary [Valerie], ‘Fetch my teeth and catch the next plane to Paris.’ Within minutes, Operation Teeth was under way and that evening after practice I drove to Paris!”
The Ferrari Testa Rossas were ominously fast, but Aston Martin believed them brittle under pressure. Capable of 175mph on the Mulsanne compared to the DBR1/300’s 165mph (even with its innovative rear wheel spats and passenger tonneau cover), they would take some beating.
Parnell devised a plan to ensure all three DBR1s, driven by Moss and Fairman, Salvadori and Shelby, and Maurice Trintignant and Paul Frère would race to lap delta of varying degrees under 4m24s… with Moss setting the hare’s pace.
“An important point in Aston Martin’s favour is the amount of co-operation that exists between members of the team at all levels,” said Moss, pointing to the team’s spirit. “When you realise your car isn’t the fastest, the best thing you can do is get on with it and have a go at the opposition.”
Moss took the start in the #4 Aston Martin. “I ran for the car, jumped in and pressed the starter. The engine roared into life immediately.” Which was more than could be said for principal rival Jean Behra’s Ferrari, which lost half a lap getting going.
Moss made hay while Behra recovered, leading the first hour, but he knew he would have trouble keeping the hoard of Ferraris at bay, despite the fact they “had brought the wrong gearing for Le Mans,” and were “prone to over-revving”.
Behra passed Moss in the second hour, but Moss reckoned he “could do more harm by chasing him” anyway.
Gradually, the Ferrari challenge faltered as first Cliff Allison retired the #15 machine, and Phil Hill, sharing with Olivier Gendebien, was delayed by a couple of long pit stops. Dan Gurney, having taken over from Behra, then pitted from the lead on lap 60 with electrical issues, handing the lead back to Fairman. “Things were looking up!” declared Moss. Until disaster struck and he retired himself in the fifth hour! It’s often been written that Moss pushed the car too hard and was used as bait to pressure the Ferraris. Moss disagreed: “When we stripped the engine down, we found the real cause of the bother was that a small piece of the rim of an inlet valve had broken off. Infuriatingly, it was as simple as that.”
As Moss got changed and resisted the temptations of the fairground, which resembled a “midnight Bank Holiday on Hampstead Heath” and included a “fat lady and a real live mermaid, ‘wall-of-death’ motorcyclists and a boxing booth!”, the battle with Ferrari raged on.
“People asked me if I was going to pack up and go back to the hotel,” wrote Moss. “My answer was simple, there was a motor race on and the Astons were leading!”
And, after all, there was mischief to be sown above the Ferrari pit… “Every time Behra came into the pits, I collected one or two of the others and went to look. We muttered comforting remarks like, ‘They haven’t a hope’ or ‘I’ll give it another five laps before it falls to bits.’ I don’t suppose it made a hoot of difference to Ferrari but it did us the power of good!”
The Gurney/Behra Ferrari finally failed at 01:29 on Sunday morning, but it wasn’t until the sister Gendebien/Hill machine stopped with five hours to go that the race fell to Aston.
Salvadori, enduring a burned foot thanks to the exhaust running directly underneath the pedal box, had pitted with a broken wheel and lost touch with the remaining Ferrari. It was a relief to everyone when the red car retired for good. Afterwards, Salvadori claimed that his car was so reliable it could have run the 24 hours all over again.
Shelby, suffering the after-effects of dysentery, and driving with “a nitro-glycerine pill wedged firmly under his tongue”, brought the #5 across the line to a famous victory ahead of Trintignant in the #6. The duo 25 laps ahead of the nearest opposition.
Several weeks later, armed with a tape recorder, Moss set about interviewing the winners for his book. He waited in Salvadori’s Kingston showroom while Roy sold an Austin A35 to Grand Prix star Tony Brooks, who promptly offered him a lift to the French Grand Prix in it.
Salvadori then told Moss, “I feel very sorry for you. I know from the lap times I was able to do that you weren’t trying to destroy the Ferraris by going flat out. The trouble that put you out shouldn’t happen to anybody, and I have no doubt your car could have finished and you would have won the race.”
Moss contested Le Mans once more, in 1961, for Ferrari’s North American Racing Team. He retired, again. In 10 attempts, he finished second twice and was always the envy of every team boss in the race.
Sir Stirling Moss never won Le Mans.
Le Mans 1959 was written by Stirling Moss and published by Cassell and Company Ltd in 1959.
