FOR THE VAST MAJORITY of motor sport enthusiasts, Stirling Moss has been part of the landscape for as long as they've been interested in motor racing. He won his first race in 1948, aged 18, and though his glittering career ended nearly 40 years ago, he's never gone away.
"Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" has entered the language - Stirling has long blessed the day when his father overruled his mother's wish to call him Hamish. Hamish Moss? You're kidding.

Stirling celebrated his 70th birthday during the second Goodwood Revival Meeting and on the Sunday, in the wet, he took a Maserati 250F from 18th on the grid to fourth. The car had no right to finish in the top ten. Someone congratulated him after the race and he said, "If anyone else out there had been trying as hard I was, then he was irresponsible."
A 70-year-old soccer player kicking a ball would be embarrassing, but Stirling demonstrated his genius.

Stirling was dicing wheel to wheel with Martin Brundle at the first Goodwood Revival Meeting, two days after his 69th birthday. Stirling swept by, drifting his Aston Martin through the bends while raising his hand in thanks to Martin for letting him by. Martin could scarcely believe it, but Stirling always raises his hand when he passes somebody.

For the backmarker it's an acknowledgement that the maestro has recognised him but, for the guy who has been battling for the corner with his tyres and brakes on fire, it's a devastating psychological ploy. And it is sheer class.

At Goodwood, he was plain Mr Moss; now he is Sir Stirling. He has joined Jack Brabham and Frank Williams as the third motor racing knight, and not before time.

I have no difficulty in nominating Sir Stirling as the greatest driver there's ever been. I did not say 'the best', I said, 'the greatest'. It is possible that today's Royal Navy has a more talented admiral than Horatio Nelson, but no fighting sailor can ever be greater than Nelson because, while excellence may occur at any time, greatness requires circumstance. The pilots who won the Battle of Britain could spend their entire careers in today's RAF and never see action.
If a Lauda, Senna or Prost had had the opportunities that Stirling had to express themselves over so wide a spectrum of racing, maybe they they could have demonstrated greatness. That opportunity was denied to them, so all they could express was excellence.

Stirling won 16 World Championship Formula One races, but another 19 non-Championship events. He was easily the most successful driver in the first World Sports Car Championship, 1953-61, with 14 wins, and he secured WSCC titles for both Mercedes-Benz and Aston Martin. He was only the second driver in history to win an Alpine Gold Cup for finishing three successive Alpine Rallies without a single penalty point, and he was a close second on the only occasion he tackled the Monte Carlo Rally.

Stirling was the first to win a post-war Grand Prix in a mid-engined car (Argentina, 1958) and the last to win a Formula One race in a front-engined car (1961 Oulton Park Gold Cup, Ferguson P99). He remains the only driver to win an F1 race in a four-wheel-drive car. He competed in 84 different types of car and won in almost all of them.

The only other driver to challenge Moss in terms of versatility is Mario Andretti. Stirling agrees: "There were things that Mario did that I couldn't, and things I did that he couldn't. And Mario's such a nice guy."

So is Stirling. When you are in his company he has the knack of making you feel like the most important person in the world. He is humorous and charming. He can be forthright about other drivers, but there is never any hint of animosity.

He will speak of one current driver who is famous for his boasting about his female conquests, and it is almost with sadness. Stirling it was, after all, who spotted a girl he fancied in a grandstand at Monaco and who sprinted round after he had won the race to ask her for a date. You do not need to ask whether she accepted.

STIRLING IS THE ONLY DRIVER to win the classic Tourist Trophy race seven times. He won more races, about 240, than anyone else who has also won a Grand Prix, and he was a prodigy.

Stirling was signed to lead the Jaguar works team on the day before his 21st birthday. 'Signed' is the wrong word, because he was not then old enough to sign a contract. He says, "I gave my word and in those days that was enough." Throughout his long partnership with Rob Walker, there never was a contract.

When he crashed at Goodwood in 1962, the race was won by Graham Hill. It was Graham's first F1 victory and Graham went on to race for another 13 years, which was roughly as long as Stirling's total career. Yet Graham was actually six months older than Stirling.
Stirling reckons that he could have raced until he was 50. "My wife tells me I'd have been killed before then," he says, "but cars were getting so much stronger."

Could he have continued to win until he was 50? Consider the 1961 International Trophy, which was run in a deluge. By one-third distance, he had lapped the entire field, including Jim Clark, Tony Brooks, John Surtees, Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren and Graham Hill. Further, everyone except Surtees used the same Coventry Climax engine, and all the front runners had either a Cooper or a Lotus so, Surtees apart, they were on a level playing field.

Stirling does, however, concede that he might have had problems with Clark if he had continued to race obsolete machinery and Clark was in the latest works Lotus. From 1959 on, Stirling drove only privately-entered cars apart from the races he did for Aston Martin. Aston Martin claims to have won the 1959 WSCC, but actually Moss won it using an Aston Martin, and there is a world of difference.

Stirling would have died rather than cheated. That did not mean he could not employ gamesmanship. John Surtees, who was blindingly quick in his early days, recalls that in one wet race he closed on Stirling. Moss knew that he had no answer so began to slide his car. Surtees thought, 'Blimey, if Stirling is having problems in these conditions, I'm going too fast,' so he backed off.

It was only after he retired that Stirling confessed that he didn't like the wet any more than anyone else. He only said that he did, and that wrecked the brains of his rivals.

Often, Moss is described as the greatest driver never to win a World Championship, and among the drivers who didn't are Tony Brooks, Bruce McLaren, Dan Gurney, Ronnie Peterson, Carlos Reutemann and Gilles Villeneuve, so he is in excellent company.

"I love racing, he says. "I would rather have lost a race, while going as fast I knew how, than to win one without trying.

"I think the World Championship damaged racing because you race for points and not for wins. Using today's scoring system, I'd have won from Mike Hawthorn in 1958, but I'm glad I didn't. I'd have just been a one-time winner, along with some fairly mediocre drivers. It hurt at the time but, in retrospect, I'd rather be known as the best driver never to have won it."

Talk to most serious citizens who have recorded the history of Formula One, press them, and there is almost complete unanimity that Sir Stirling is the greatest who has ever been. Nigel Roebuck wrote recently in Motor Sport that Moss combined the best qualities of both Prost and Senna. Even those who will nominate another driver as the greatest of all, have no difficulty in accepting that Stirling was the great all-rounder.

And the great thing is that his many fans can still see him in action, head back, arms at full stretch, in total harmony with his car. Moreover, he will be wearing his white Johnson helmet and his blue cotton overalls, but then he has just won a 12-year battle with the FIA to do so. That's the way his public remembers him, and Stirling has always striven to please his public.