A thought for Sir Stirling

Sir Stirling Moss suffered a serious accident at home over the weekend when a lift malfunction at his house resulted in the doors of the lift opening when it was at a different floor. Sadly, Sir Stirling fell three floors inside the lift shaft and suffered two broken ankles and several other broken bones in the foot. There was some damage to his vertebrae but not internal injuries. He was admitted to the London Hospital and then moved yesterday following the intervention of Professor Sid Watkins to the Princess Grace Hospital, where he was operated upon. It is hoped that he will be moved out of the Intensive Care Unit later today and Lady Moss reports that he is in remarkably good spirits and already complaining about the size and quality of the hospital breakfast.

Moss (80) is always considered to have been the greatest F1 driver never to win the World Championship. he raced in F1 between 1954 and 1962, when his career ended with a bad crash at Goodwood. He suffered serious head injuries. He was knighted for his extraordinary service to the sport in January 2000.

Moss is best remembered for his behaviour in 1958 when his sporting attitude cost him the World Championship when he stood up for rival Mike Hawthorn, who faced a penalty in Portugal that would, in retrospect, have denied him the points that he needed to beat Moss. Stirling never for one moment entertained any thought of gaining an advantage in such a way, and in any case his natural sense of justice would not have allowed him to see Hawthorn unjustly penalised. So he stepped forward to defend him. Hawthorn subsequently went on to beat Moss by a mere point, even though he had only won one race that year to Moss’s four. That was sufficient to make Mike Hawthorn Britainís first World Champion.