Whipped Cream Difficulties

Stirling Moss died “quietly on Sunday at his home in London”. He was 90. McThag beat me on the tribute watch.

“To race a car through a turn at maximum possible speed when there is a great lawn to all sides is difficult,” he said in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1961, “but to race a car at maximum speed through a turn when there is a brick wall on one side and a precipice on the other — ah, that’s an achievement!”
He raced for 14 years, won 212 of his 529 races in events that included Grand Prix, sports cars and long-distance rallying, in 107 different types of car.
He set the world land speed record on the salt flats of Utah in 1957. He won more than 40 percent of the races he entered, including 16 Grand Prix. For four consecutive years, 1955-58, he finished second in the world Grand Prix championship. And in each of the next three years, he placed third.

The man was a class act. And I don’t mean in terms of style (although he apparently was rather stylish):

He came closest in 1958, but testified on behalf of another driver, Mike Hawthorn, who was accused of an infraction in the Portugal Grand Prix. Hawthorn, as a result, was not disqualified. When the season ended, Hawthorn had 42 points, which are given for factors like fastest lap as well as finishing position. Moss — though he had four Grand Prix wins to Hawthorn’s one — finished second with 41 points.

…

In 1962 at the Goodwood Circuit racetrack in England’s West Sussex County, a plume of fire shot from his Lotus 18/21 car. The crowd gasped. As Moss tried to pass Graham Hill, his car veered and slammed into an eight-foot-high earthen bank.
It took more than a half-hour to free Moss from the wreckage. His left eye and cheekbone were shattered, his left arm broken and his left leg broken in two places.
An X-ray revealed a far worse injury. The right side of his brain was detached from his skull. He was in a coma for 38 days, and paralyzed on one side of his body for six months. He remembered nothing of the disaster. He considered hypnosis to recover the memory, but a psychiatrist said that might cause the paralysis to return.
When he left the hospital, he took all 11 nurses who had treated him to dinner, followed by a trip to the theater. A year later, he returned to Goodwood and pushed a Lotus to 145 m.p.h. on a wet track. He realized he was no longer unconsciously making the right moves. He said he felt like he had lost his page in a book.
Though he believed he remained a better driver than all but 10 or 12 in the world, that was not good enough. He retired at 33.
Moss was more than his talent. He was a beautiful name, one that still connotes high style a half-century after his crash, evoking an era of blazers and cravats, of dance bands and cigarette holders. One legend had him driving hundreds of miles in a vain effort to introduce himself to Miss Italy the night before a big race. His 16 books cemented his legend.

…

Stirling grew up excelling at horsemanship, but said he gave it up because horses were hard to steer.

…

…for a couple of generations, British traffic cops sneeringly asked speeding motorists, “Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?” (Moss, who had been knighted, was once asked that question, and answered, “Sir Stirling, please.”)

Lawrence emailed an obit for Tim Brooke-Taylor, British comedian:

Brooke-Taylor was reunited with Cleese and Chapman on ITV’s At Last The 1948 Show, another collection of sketches and quick-fire repartee.
The first episode featured The Four Yorkshiremen sketch, co-written by Brooke-Taylor, which would later be revived by the Monty Python team.

I apologize for the quality. But: this is (according to YouTube) actually from “At Last the 1948 Show”.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 12th, 2020 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Cars, Obits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.