Motorsport: No moss on this remarkable racer

Stirling Moss, (left), John Surtees and Pat Hoare, (right), with their silverware after the rain-soaked Ardmore race. Photo / APN

Taken purely at face value John Surtees' immediate post-race comment about Stirling Moss' win in the rain-soaked 1962 New Zealand Grand Prix at Ardmore might seem almost like a put-down.

"He's just not normal," he said after Moss' devastating display of on-the-limit wet weather driving which saw him lap the entire field.

But Surtees' words were no put-down but an expression of awestruck admiration from a man who two years later would become Formula 1 world champion, the first and so far only man to win world titles on motorbikes and in Grand Prix cars.

For on that wet afternoon at the airfield circuit near Papakura, Moss had shown emphatically that what had been written about him was 100 per cent true: as a driver he was quite simply in a class of his own.

At Ardmore on January 6, 1962, no one could get near him as he danced the Rob Walker Racing 2.5-litre Coventry Climax-engined Lotus 21 across rivers of water while torrential rain hammered down.

Among those who had no answer to Moss' prowess were six current or recent Formula 1 drivers: Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren, Surtees, Lorenzo Bandini, Roy Salvadori and Ron Flockhart.

And Moss had lapped them all. He had put two laps on McLaren, who brought his Cooper-Climax home third behind Surtees.

Only Surtees finished on the same lap as Moss, though he too had been lapped by the Londoner. When Moss powered his Lotus past Surtees' Cooper the former motorcycle ace tucked in behind and stayed there. When Moss got the signal that the race had been shortened from 150 to 100 laps, he eased his pace a little and Surtees nipped past.

It had been an astonishing display of race car driving, Moss in complete control of the Lotus and running at a pace no one else could approach. While others were slithering and sliding and spinning, Moss was imperturbable. He had only one mishap, when the Lotus aquaplaned in the corner on to Pit Straight.

At one point he had slid his goggles down and shielded his eyes with his hand, steering the Lotus with the other hand and at undiminished pace.

Despite the constant rain, the crowd of 45,000 stayed put. Among them was 11-year-old Richard Winch who was at the Grand Prix with his dad. Nowadays an IT consultant with an international reputation, Winch has been a lifelong motor racing fan.

January 6, 1962, is etched in his mind forever. Winch met Moss at a dinner in England in 2000 and asked him about the 1962 Grand Prix. "He said the water was running across the track in rivers and he couldn't believe how deep they were."

University student Bob Pearce had a plan to beat the massive traffic queues that traditionally accompanied Grand Prix day at Ardmore. He'd ride his pushbike to Ardmore from his Meadowbank home.

After a journey that began at dawn, Pearce found himself a prime position, sitting on a hay bale, with the bike propped up against it, and just metres from the road the cars would race on.

Pearce, whose journalism career included writing on motorsport for the New Zealand Herald, remembers a classically fine Auckland summer's day punctuated by about 85 minutes of rain.

"What stands out in retrospect is that nowadays you see the cars and not the drivers but back then you could see the driver at work. You could practically see the expression on Moss's face.

"My lasting impression is of his complete control." Young Hamiltonian Jim Palmer was actually in the race and got a real insight into the level of Moss' achievement.

Palmer was in the early stages of a career that saw him mature into one of New Zealand's best-ever pen-wheeler racers. He and his father George had imported an ex-works Lotus 20 Formula Junior fitted with an experimental 1500cc Cosworth-developed Ford four cylinder motor that had never yet been raced. Cosworth couldn't even tell the Palmers what rev limit they should use. The Grand Prix would be as much a development session as a race.

But that went out the window when the rain began falling and Palmer found himself driving an open-wheeler on a wet track for the first time.

At one point as he came down the main straight, the car suddenly spun. "I was probably doing about 110mph (almost 180km/h) and it just aquaplaned on the water and spun around like a top. I don't know how many times it went around but it stopped about three or four feet away from the crowd, and pointing in the right direction down towards the Cloverleaf [corner]."

Palmer has been eternally grateful that the car stopped when it did and didn't career off the track and into the spectators.

After pitting and losing several laps checking for possible damage, Palmer went on to finish 15th, nine laps down on Moss.

He's still in awe of Moss' performance that day. "Brabham, Bruce [McLaren], no one was anywhere near him."

In truth, it was one of the great drives of Moss' stellar career, one that internationally has maybe been a little overlooked because it took place in a remote part of the globe and not in a F1 world championship race. But among the drivers he beat that day were the cream of early-1960s Formula 1 talent.

The win has an added poignancy because it was maybe his last great drive in a Grand Prix car. Just three months later, on Easter Monday, his Grand Prix career ended after a still-unexplained accident in a non-championship Formula 1 race at Goodwood in England.

After recovering from massive brain injuries that left him partially paralysed, Moss tested a Lotus 19 sports car at Goodwood in 1963. The lap times were competitive, his reactions fine but he felt he had lost his ability to concentrate. He announced his retirement, a decision he later regretted.

By the end of 1964, he could concentrate at pre-accident levels, and in hindsight he felt he should have left the Goodwood test till then. But he'd made his decision and he stuck to it, making a comeback in the 1970s to drive saloon cars and then more recently in historic racing events.

Moss finally hung up his helmet on June 9, at 81. No one who witnessed his sublime drive at Ardmore will ever forget it.

As Surtees had intimated, Moss operated at a very different level to other racing drivers.