A superb and rare photo of the amazing Stirling Moss in his magnificent Maserati
250F Formula 1 race car, seen in action
during the 1954 Italian Grand Prix,
which was ridden on the circuit of Monza on the 5TH of September,
1954.
Stirling Moss had scored the third quickest lap during practice, but during
the race his Maserati blew an oil hose from the engine. Moss was able to repair
this and continue the race, but he could do no better then finish in 10TH place,
9 laps behind winner Juan Manuel Fangio (Mercedes W196). Moss was riding a
really good race before the mechanical failure happened. On the photograph we
see the oil polluted windscreen of his Maserati. Moss ‘s Maserati 250F was owned by himself, as he wasn’t part of the
Maserati factory team in 1954. Mike Hawthorn (Ferrari 625 / 553) finished
second in the race, Froilan Gonzalez / Umberto Maglioli (Ferrari 625 / 553)
finished third.
The Maserati 250F was first raced in January 1954, in the '2.5 litre' Formula One racing (thus, the '250'
and 'F'). 26 examples were made in total. It was introduced for the 1954
Formula One season and remained in use by customer teams until 1960. It mainly
used the Maserati A6 SSG straight-six 2.5-litre engine (220 bhp at 7400 rpm),
ribbed 13.4" drum brakes, wishbone independent front suspension and a De
Dion tube axle. It was built by Gioacchino Colombo, Vittorio Bellentani and
Alberto Massimino; the tubular work was by Valerio Colotti, then working for
Maserati. A streamlined version with bodywork which partially enclosed the
wheels (similar to the 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196 "Typ Monza") was used
in the 1956 French Grand Prix. The 250F first raced in the 1954 Argentine
Grand Prix where Juan Manuel Fangio won the first of his two victories before
he left for the new Mercedes-Benz team. Fangio won the 1954 Drivers' World
Championship, with points gained with both Maserati and Mercedes-Benz; Stirling Moss raced his own privately
owned 250F for the full 1954 season (SEE PHOTO). Although Bellentoni and Massimino
left for Ferrari and Moss left for Mercedes-Benz, 1955 saw a setup with 5-speed
gearbox as well as SU fuel injection (240 bhp) and Dunlop disc brakes. Jean
Behra ran this in a five-member works team which included Luigi Musso. In 1956
Stirling Moss won at the Italian Grand Prix and the Monaco Grand Prix in his
private car. In 1956 three 250F T2 cars first appeared for the works
drivers. Developed by Giulio Alfieri using lighter steel tubes they sported a
slimmer, stiffer body and sometimes the new 315 bhp V12 engine, although it
offered little or no real advantage over the older straight 6. It was
eventually reused in the unsuccessful 1966 F1 Cooper Maserati. In 1957 Juan
Manuel Fangio drove to four more championship victories, including his
legendary final win at German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring (Aug. 4, 1957),
where he overcame a 50 second deficit in just 20 laps, passing the race leader
on the final lap to take the win, and his final race at the French Grand Prix. The
Constructors' World Championship was introduced in 1958, by which time the 250F was generally outclassed. However,
the car remained a favourite with the privateers, including Maria Teresa de
Filippis and was used until 1960. In total, the 250F competed in 46 Formula One
championship races with 277 entries, leading to eight wins. Success was not
limited to World Championship events with 250F drivers scoring three major
victories in Australia.
The magnificent Stirling
Moss, who raced from 1948 to 1962, won 194 of the 497 races he entered,
including 16 Formula One Grands Prix. He once told an interviewer that he had
participated in 525 races overall, as many as 62
in a single year, in 84 different cars. Like many
drivers of the era, he competed in several formulae – sometimes on the same
day. He was a true pioneer in the British Formula One racing scene and placed
second in the Drivers' Championship four times in a row from 1955 to 1958. Moss's
first Formula One win was in 1955 at his home race, the British Grand Prix at
Aintree, driving the superb Mercedes-Benz W196 Single Seater for a convincing
German 1-2-3-4 win, with Karl Kling and Piero Taruffi in the international
driver line-up. It was the only race where he finished in front of Juan Manuel
Fangio, his teammate, friend, mentor and arch rival at Mercedes. It is
sometimes debated whether Fangio, one of the all-time great gentlemen of sport,
yielded the lead at the last corner to let Moss win in front of his home crowd.
Moss himself asked Fangio repeatedly, "Did you let me win?" and
Fangio always replied, "No. You were just better than me that day". One
of his most famous drives was in the 1955 Mille Miglia, the Italian 1597
km open-road endurance race, which he won in the
record time of 10 hours and 8 minutes, finishing almost half an hour ahead of
teammate Fangio in second place. His navigator in the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR
#722 (indicating the time of the start) was journalist Denis Jenkinson. As
navigator, he supported Moss with notes about details of the long road trip,
then an innovative technique. This assistance helped Moss compete against
drivers who had a lot of local knowledge of the route. Jenkinson later wrote
extensively about the experience.
In 1957 Moss won on the longest circuit to ever hold a Grand
Prix, the daunting 25 kilometre Pescara
Circuit, again demonstrating his skills at high speed, long distance driving.
He beat Fangio, who started on pole, by a little over 3 minutes over the course
of a gruelling 3 hour race. Moss believed the manner in which the battle was
fought was as important as the outcome. This sporting attitude cost him the
1958 World Championship. When rival Mike Hawthorn was threatened with a penalty
in a Portugal race, Moss
defended Hawthorn's actions. Hawthorn went on to beat Moss by one point, even
though he had only won one race that year to Moss's four, making Hawthorn
Britain's first World Champion. Moss was as gifted at the wheel of a sports car
as he was in a Grand Prix car. For three consecutive years (1958–1960) he won
the grueling 1000 km race at Germany's
Nürburgring, the first two years in an Aston Martin (where he won almost
single-handedly) and the third in the memorable "birdcage" Maserati. For
the 1961 F1 season, which was run under 1.5-litre rules, Enzo Ferrari rolled
out his state-of-the-art Ferrari 156, also known as Sharknose. Moss was stuck
with an underpowered Coventry-Climax-powered Lotus, but managed to win the 1961
Monaco Grand Prix by 3.6 seconds, and later also the partially wet 1961 German
Grand Prix. In 1962, Moss was badly injured in a crash at Goodwood while
driving a Lotus. The accident put him in a coma and partially paralyzed the
left side of his body. He recovered but decided to retire from racing after a
private test session the next year. He made a brief comeback in the British
Touring Car Championship in 1980 with Audi, and in recent years has continued
to race in historic cars. During his career, Moss drove a private Jaguar, and
raced for Maserati, Vanwall, Cooper, and Lotus, as well as Mercedes-Benz. He
preferred to race British cars stating "Better to lose honorably in a
British car than win in a foreign one".
The Maserati
brothers, Alfieri Maserati, Bindo Maserati, Carlo Maserati, Ettore Maserati,
Ernesto Maserati and Mario Maserati, were all involved with automobiles from
the beginning of the 20th century. Alfieri, Bindo and Ernesto built 2-litre
Grand Prix cars for Diatto. In 1926, Diatto suspended the production of race
cars, leading to the creation of the first Maserati and the founding of the
Maserati marque. One of the first Maseratis, driven by Alfieri, won the 1926
Targa Florio. Maserati began making race cars with 4, 6, 8 and 16 cylinders
(actually two straight eights mounted parallel to one another). Mario, an
artist, is believed to have devised the company's trident emblem, based on one
of Bologna's civic
symbols: the statue of Neptune in one of
the city's main squares. Alfieri Maserati died in 1932 but three other
brothers, Bindo, Ernesto and Ettore, kept the firm going, building cars that
won races. In 1937 the remaining Maserati brothers sold their shares in the
company to the Adolfo Orsi family, who in 1940 relocated the company
headquarters to their hometown of Modena, where it
remains to this day. The brothers continued in engineering roles with the
company, however. Racing successes continued, even against the giants of German
racing, Auto Union and Mercedes. In 1940
a Maserati won the Indianapolis 500,
a feat repeated the following year. The war then
intervened, Maserati abandoning cars to produce components for the Italian war
effort. Once peace was restored, Maserati returned to making cars, the Maserati
A6 series, doing well in the post-war racing scene. This was the last
involvement of the Maserati brothers, who after the 10-year contract with Orsi,
went on to form the O.S.C.A. car builder. The famous Argentinian driver
Juan-Manuel Fangio raced for Maserati for a number of years in the 1950s,
producing a number of stunning victories including winning the world
championship in 1957 in the Maserati
250F. Other
racing projects in the 50s were the Maserati 200S, Maserati 300S, Maserati
350S, Maserati 450S, followed in 1961 by the famous Maserati Birdcage. Maserati
had retired from factory racing participation due to the Guidizzolo accident
(1957), though it built racing cars to be raced by others after that date.
This is a very nice and very rare non period photo that reflects a wonderful era of
Maserati ‘s automotive history in a wonderful way. This is your rare chance to own this
photo, therefore it is printed in a nice large format of ca. 8" x 12"
(ca. 20 x 30 cm). It makes it perfectly suitable for framing.
Shipping costs will only be $ 7.00 regardless of how many photos you
buy. For 5 or more photos, shipping is free!
(Note: A. Herl, Inc. does not appear on
photo, for ebay purposes only)
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expressed or implied. Sold as collectable item only. We are clearing out our
archives that we have gathered from various sources.
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We have
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After many decades
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