Sir Stirling Moss MBE (born September 17, 1929 in London) is a retired English racing driver. His success in a variety of categories placed him among the world's elite - he is often called "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship". Moss, who raced from 1948 to 1962, won 194 of the 497 races he entered, including 16 Formula One Grands Prix. He once told an interviewer that he had participated in 525 races overall, as many as 62 in a single year, in 84 different cars. Like many drivers of the era, he competed in several formulae - sometimes at the same time.
Moss' first Formula One win was in 1955 at his home race, the British Grand Prix at Aintree, driving the superb Mercedes-Benz W196 Monoposto for a convincing German 1-2-3-4 win, with Karl Kling and Piero Taruffi as further pilots in the international driver line-up. It was the only race where he finished in front of Juan Manuel Fangio, his teammate, friend, mentor and archrival at Mercedes. It is sometimes debated whether Fangio, one of the all-time great gentlemen of sport, yielded the lead at the last corner to let Moss win in front of his home crowd. Moss himself asked Fangio repeatedly, "Did you let me win?" and Fangio always replied, "No. You were just better than me that day."
