PORTRAIT OF A HERO

[Music] a private group of public figures moss is a member of this club and the people we'll be talking with are the ones who know him as either a friend an item or as an opponent he certainly has one fault he doesn't know he doesn't know how to choose race cars he picks the wrong automobiles to drive and he has all his career whether because mostly because he wants to drive british cars and he wants to drive non-factory cars and uh he knows this and admits it freely and he says that i think basically because he wants to come from behind he wants to be the underdog but he does make it harder he drives cars that as he says are fragile and more breakable than they might be it's a cliche in the business that he could have been champion of the world three times two times once certainly had he driven for ferrari tell me sterling when did you get the idea that you first wanted to drive or be a racing driver well i was driving at a very early age it's about six you know and i had a car when i was 11 just to run around the farm but i first wanted to become a racing driver at about 17 quite late and [Music] i then wanted to become a professional racing driver in other words to make it my life's work uh you know at about 90. well there weren't any professional drivers were there at that time no there weren't because i had a big problem with my father you know he said look let's face it this is not a normal business you're it's an expensive sport and uh well you you can't become a professional that's all there is to it although i had been offered a job you know to drive professionally and um i did drive professionally after that you know that is i took up that job so to speak and um i did race as a professional because my father said i could do it for a year and see how much money i lost and then go and join him again on the farm he came to me for his first racing car what kind of person was he when he started well he was full of enthusiasm actually he just left school and i think his father even had more enthusiasm than he did he came in just at the time when the public were really getting enthusiastic about racing he came to the fore i think rather because of that one of the things which has now grown up with the modern english racing drivers is a kind of single-mindedness which sterling i think first originated back in 51 when i was talking about when just in a casual conversation somebody said one day what are you going to do when you're not driving sterling he said i should be driving all the time and somebody said how can you drive all the time you know you can't make a career of it he said but i'm going to i'm going to be a professional professional racing driver well at that stage in 51 nobody in great britain had ever heard of a professional racing driver such things didn't exist they were usually a fairly wealthy young gentleman what was the what was the first car you drove first racing car you had uh it was a cooper a cooper 500 was the first racing car that i had i then had a cooper 1100 uh which was the same thing but bigger a bigger engine i mean and then i went on to a thing called the hwm with lance macklin and uh you know at the same time started to drive a jaguar for jaguars darling what do you remember about your first race well the first competitive event that i did really was a hill climb um and before i went to the race of course was quite a few weeks because we were short of petrol at that time and it was rationed and racing was rather frowned upon what year was this now oh goodness me 1947 about 1947 anyway and uh i can't honestly say i remember very much i mean i just did it because i liked it you know i wanted to do it and uh nothing sticks out in my memory i mean i didn't have a great big shunt and break the car or something so um you know there's nothing very much to say what did you expect to win it i mean what no no i guess i wasn't that quite that stupid not at that time no i didn't i tried to win it of course and um the first race i oh the first race i thought i had a chance of winning yes the first hill climb which in other words was competitive uh i didn't feel that i had really the chance of winning but i would try to win what was the reaction of um of older drivers or any feeling any hard feeling on their party i have a young feeling most of them were very nice they gave me some help and sort of said well you know you're doing a good job don't go and kill yourself but take it easy that was the biggest thing i had to fight against really was that you don't really know how to drive until you've had an accident or two you know and that sort of thing um i suppose that was the the greatest uh thing they i never remember them they never sort of did any carving up or anything but i had great trouble in getting cars i couldn't get them you know i mean other people's cars to drive i tried to get a jaguar from the factory and uh well they wouldn't let me have one you know so then i went down i tried mg's and i tried morgan's and i tried everybody you know and they thought well this guy's riding for a fall and i'm not gonna have him having his call when he's driving our car i can't blame them it was annoying oh why'd they feel this way if you won 10 or 11 first races you know in other words i was going a bit beyond my ability which i may have been and that obviously i was riding for a fall before you even started driving were there any famous old drivers i mean as a child were you more interested in automobiles than anything else well i yes i was interested in them uh planes as well because it was the war time you know but i modeled my driving style on uh dr farina nino farina whose style was that of complete relaxation with his arms outstretched more or less as i am now and uh i thought he looked rather nice you see and i thought well you know this guy isn't really trying very hard but uh he certainly looks as though he can drive oh my gosh she was world champion so i thought well he must be good you know so i did and i got this to the relaxed style and then of my own reasoning i don't know why that's because i'm so short i started to put my head back a bit and look over you know sort of like that which is difficult to do just at the moment but i can and uh i do that and um that is my sort of style if you like whereas mike hawthorne was was sort of a bit of a hunch and fangirls was more normal you know but one driver can tell another driver in a picture when he looks tiny by his style you really can i mean you know each is an individualistic style not that they work with that we work on having one i did i must admit i really did you look at jimmy clark graham hill and gurney well you'd have to ask them i i think a lot of people would say that nobody can imitate most not on a circuit anyway i mean moss does drive extremely well the thing about all the publicity he gets the publicity in the everyday press it tends sometimes to blur this image of the man as a craftsman a craftsman behind the wheel a craftsman racing circuit but obviously of course if you're going to look up to anybody as a young enthusiast well you have to go a long way to find any better anybody better than more six to ten of the young drivers coming up today there's no question about it they they base their ideas on sterling's methods they try and do a sterling i don't know quite honestly i don't really know because it isn't the sort of thing you go up to a bloke and say what are you doing copying me because you know you don't see it that way anyway it's a style but they must have either modeled their style on farina or myself or somebody else that has that type of mental driving you know you've been around they used to call fangio the old man of racing you've been around quite a while now they're calling you the old man well i lost my hair as well no i said this is that through experience it's uh yes i guess well i've been in racing so long that um you know you become a fitting fixture she's now if uh was my 16th year in 62 uh not that i did much racing in 62 you know but i did uh and that's a long time and uh i hope i have the respect of other drivers this means a lot to me that they don't consider that i'm a dirty driver i don't consider i am i hope they don't and uh if they did feel so i think that they would have enough guts to come up and sort of say well you you know you drove me off the circuit which i don't reckon to do say it's about uh lunchtime isn't it don't you ever eat around here yeah well let me show you a bit of london some of the best restaurants how about it whatever something like that all right you have a drink too hang on juan manuel fangio was the old man of racing until he retired in 1957. when he left the field moss inherited the title the two have been tied together since the beginning of moss's career for moss fangio played a dual role he was his nemesis and he was his hero fangio's record was something he wanted to beat there may have been a record he knew he could never better in nine years of racing fangio crashed only once he was a champion of the world of five times he came in first at one time or another at every grand prix race in the world [Applause] between moss and fangio there is every difference in the world fangio was not a faster driver than moss but morris pushed his cars to their limit fangio had the sensitivity that told him the moment his car was beginning to strain he gentled generated moss and fangio are two schools of thought about the same subject bonjour risked as little as possible in a race he was cautious one rule was that a driver must finish a race and if he didn't speed was useless moss raced with one thing in mind speed at times moss's school won but the record says that fangio was world's champion five times he made the winner's circle his private parking place [Music] um [Applause] [Music] i did patent some things after fangio because i followed him and i tried to learn from him what i could it wasn't exactly that you'd sort of get a blackboard and take me and so say well now we've had the lesson number ten but um i i would follow him and that is why i know how good he was because you could take the same car with the same towers the same fuel the same day and you could follow in his tire marks and still go off the road and he got round and you know it's just balance and he could balance a motor car well in all fairness year though he's been retired several years perhaps do you think we were oh thank you john you think you were at your best when you were racing against bonjour or not no i'm not going to say i was but you see racing is rarely mind over mata not matter over mine there are two types of racing driver the quick and the dead and they're usually the same thing but um no i maybe if he was racing today if he made a comeback maybe i might beat him but it wouldn't uh it wouldn't please me because he is my idol and i just think he's the best you wouldn't say so i know but if you joined ferrara you would have been a world champion many times over yes and you've never been the world's champion i'm glad to say i haven't resourced buddy because i must admit that i did really want to be um you know way back in sort of 56 that sort of time 57 8 or whatever it was i really did want to be world champion and then i started to think about it and it didn't really worry me you know i mean as long as i can race i'm doing what i want to do and uh if somebody else gets the world championship and he enjoys it well you know he can have it and now i wouldn't like it actually it would be very embarrassment well because um it would be a disadvantage you really would i'd far rather go down history if you like as the man who never won it than the man who won it once or twice because i would like to have it more times than fanja fangio is my idol although he's not racing today and he's been five times world champion and how can you beat five six well it's one better but boy it takes six years whereas two or three i mean you're only half as good which i know i think i am only half as good but if i can kid the uh 150 million people in america you know that i better than fangio well that is that really doesn't kid me i mean i don't need to win it to be better than fangio but i am not better than fangirl and i know it and so why should i kid you how do you know well i mean i just raced against him and this man could um well he could always go that bit faster you know i mean all right he'd do a certain lap time i might go out and be a bit quicker then he'd go a bit quicker still and it would keep on we keep on whittling away at the thing and in the end i know he was fastest the majority opinion is that moss could have been champion driving for a factory team his record proves his talent so it wasn't a question of the man but the car the reason moss was never world's champion lies in himself he was followed by what is called bad luck but what in reality is the logical result of being a lone wolf knowing that he could reach his goal driving for a factory team he refused to do so this makes him the don coyote of racing and his desire to beat the best in an english car was underdog ism of the highest order factory teams have everything at their disposal experience teams of mechanics unlimited funds the smaller manufacturer does the best he can but there comes a time when good intentions cannot beat mechanical perfection and the best driver in the world cannot overcome a faulty gearbox sterling before a race do you have any special feelings of exhilaration nervousness or fear no not nervousness or fear excitement exhilaration or the thought of the hope of exhilaration yes um it's an interest in other words i look forward to getting in the car and doing two hours of motoring and i may get frightened i don't say i don't of course i do if i go too fast but uh i'm not nervous of it and i can sleep the night before and uh i don't get sort of the twitch and find it difficult to eat i eat a very big breakfast uh before a race late so it's sort of brunch uh what about this fear do you feel it at the moment or do you feel it afterwards no you feel it afterwards um because at the moment you have plenty to do to try and get out of it but when you have done something that's likely to make you frightened you certainly know it when you get down the road a couple hundred yards you feel the tingling in your hands and your stomach sags down and you know you realize that you're pretty lucky to be alive i suppose and you make up your mind that you're not going to do it on the next corner but um it doesn't happen before or at the time it's a dif quite a different thing it's the same as um bravery you know people think well you're very brave to race well i don't want to ruin the whole motor racing by saying you don't have to be but uh if you do then i think you're pretty stupid to do it uh you need bravery at times i must admit i mean if a wheel falls off on one car and you're in the team and this wheel falls off here and you go back to the pits and you take over the number two there's a good chance that might fall off again then it requires a certain amount of bravery i suppose or if you see your teammate with something obviously wrong like that that requires a certain amount of bravery and occasionally you go into a corner and you have to force yourself you know to go a little deeper before you back off the accelerator or you lift off the brakes a little early or you accelerate a little early you know the certain ways that you try to increase your speed and that is overcoming something that you can't quite understand when you're a kid you know you're frightened of the dark because you don't know what's there or it's the same in motor racing when the car hits oil and goes out of control you are ultimately afraid because of what has happened and you can't understand it you know you think well why did you do it if you see the oil before it happens then you're not worried you throw thing into a slide first and uh it may get a bit worse but it is not really frightening it is if suddenly the car starts to slide i mean i had a wheel come off once and i remember the thing slid like anything and i thought well extraordinary thing to happen and that's all the wheel going and then i could understand why it didn't work you know tell me sterling when was the time you knew the most fear the most uh fear that i knew i have ever known i think was at monza when we were going around in a race and uh my steering sheet in other words i was holding the car down the banking like that and suddenly it went like that well you know something tells you there's something wrong and particularly as the car didn't go to the left in fact it shot up to the right because it was on the banking and i had no brakes or virtually no brakes i could not steer the car i couldn't stop it and all i had to think about really was yours truly sort of gonna he's gonna buy it and i had to sit there with my foot on what was laughingly referred to as the brakes trying to stop from 165 and thinking well i'm going to go over the top of the banking and then i'm going to be in trouble and that really frightened me but there are many occasions when i've been near or nearer to death most likely and haven't thought very much of it at that time it was brought home very strongly i can tell you now to something perhaps a little more serious the crash of goodwood i can tell you truthfully that it is unknown by me as to why i had it um they checked the car there was nothing wrong with the car i checked my own feelings i can't remember it of course of my what the way i behave on the track and it is not reasonable that i would pass the guy was passing in this position and it's not reasonable i would drive into a bank at 100 miles an hour i mean you know this isn't done really it's true that once i got off the road i got on grass and therefore lost control this is reasonable but why did i get off the road because to me as a professional driver it is important why i lost control if it was the car or was it me i'm not going to blame the designer i'm not blaming myself yet i'm prepared to accept the responsibility if it is shown that it was me it doesn't worry me i mean i've made mistakes before this one i paid a little higher if you like i banged a few things and broke them up you know but uh if it was that i'll accept it if it wasn't then i think he should accept it in fact i think he would it was rather annoying well that's an understatement it was graham hill wasn't it yes do you know why you were trying to pass graham there yes because graham was on the right hand side for a right-hand corner which is unusual he gave a signal to thank of marshall for showing the blue flag and i might have and this is unlikely i might have thought that he was waving me on and graham is very uh he's very well mannered on the track in other words if graham did think i wasn't passing which is reasonable and pulled out and i was there i would not sort of tap him and sort of say look i'm here man i'd ease over to the left so we wouldn't hit and then i would have been on the grass which was unfortunate that is a possible that is maybe the most possible but uh graham was pretty staggered that i was you know came faster where i did what do you remember i consciously remember nothing but i do remember taking a friend of mine around the pits but i would not have known it was the race day i cannot remember even getting up or having breakfast or going to the track obviously not leaving it or anything i can even the night before i was in a twist competition just for fun and i don't even remember that people just told you that you were yeah you know i mean i do remember playing croaky or whatever it is you know it's hammering a ball around and i remember that the day before but i don't remember anything until about seven weeks or so after the accident that is my island of amnesia whatever they call it [Music] monza 1962 one of the grand prix circuits in a year that saw the british finally take the championship this is the record for the year 1962. the world driving championship was won by an englishman second third and fourth places were taken by englishmen they all won in english cars the world's champion grand prix car was english moss's ambition was realized by others but it was moss who gave england her victories because he was the model for other drivers the goal to shoot at is this then the portrait of a winner or a loser it all depends on what side of glory you'd rather look the winner is graham hill now the man who fulfilled the wish of sterling moss to be the englishman who won in an english car sterling moss's accident in 1962 certainly changed the outlook for 1962 um i'm sure i don't think i would have been world champion in 1962 if sterling had been driving of course it would depend on the on the type of car that he'd been driving if he'd have had a reliable car i'm sure that he would have been world champion today and it was a tragic thing for him and for motor racing that he had this accident [Music] sterling moss is part of the great history of british automobile racing he is a product of what has gone before will influence the men who follow him car racing is the history of people like sterling moss men who are driven with a single purpose and that is to win [Music] you