Stirling Moss back in driving seat at 80

SIR Stirling Moss OBE, Britain's best-loved and most famous racing driver, will make his racing comeback at the Silverstone Classic later this month.

Moss is planning to return to racing following the accident at home that left him with two broken ankles. He will race his beautiful 1950s Osca sports-racing car during the Silverstone Classic in the Royal Automobile Club Woodcote Trophy.

"I hope to race at Silverstone in the Osca; that's the race I'm aiming at," Moss told BBC Radio 4. “I’ll be putting my foot down,” he confirmed. Now 80 years old, Moss is determined to return to racing and says that the fall in early March has not dampened his enthusiasm for racing, 63 years after he started in the sport.

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The accident was the result of a lift malfunction at his home in Mayfair and Sir Stirling suffered two broken ankles, four broken bones to his foot, skin abrasions and four chipped vertebrae. He had surgery to both ankles after falling 32 feet.

"I remember the whole thing," he said. "It was a bit of a drama, and it was very silly. It just takes longer to recover when you are older and it's very boring."

Moss will race on the Silverstone Historic Grand Prix circuit in the hour-long Royal Automobile Club Woodcote Trophy, a race in the series for pre '56 sports-racing cars organised by Motor Racing Legends.

Ranged against the British racing legend will be a stunning field of period sports-racing cars, including Jaguar C-types and D-types, Aston Martin DB3Ss and a Ferrari 750 Monza.

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No fewer than six races for grids of evocative F1 cars from yesteryear will commemorate the very first points scoring Grand Prix, held at Silverstone on Sunday 13 May 1950. That milestone was the first race to count for the new World Championship for Drivers and, in front of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Alfa Romeo team dominated the race with a quartet of 158s.

Silverstone Classic’s special 60th birthday celebrations will pitch more than 120 of the world’s most sought-after and famous classic F1 cars into real race action. These cars may be hugely valuable with famous histories, but they are still raced hard and the great majority remain in period livery, just as when they were driven by the legends of the sport.

The early years of the British Grand Prix will be re-lived by cars and drivers from the Historic Grand Prix Car Association, racing in pre '61 and pre '66 contests, while the 1970s and early 1980s will be brought to spectacular life by two races for the cars from the Grand Prix Masters series.

The oldest cars will line up for the HGPCA Pre '61 races, with a wonderful grid of both pre- and post-war cars. At the very head of the races will be the cars from the final days of front-engined supremacy in Grand Prix racing, notably the Lotus 16 of Philip Walker and the Ferrari Dino of Tony Smith.

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The gorgeous Dino of Smith has a special place in motor racing history as the last front-engined car to win a Grand Prix, when Phil Hill took the Italian GP at Monza in September 1960. Almost exactly 50 years ago, Hill finished seventh at Silverstone in 1960 British Grand Prix, headed by the Cooper and Lotus teams to show that the writing was on the wall for the front-engined cars.

The second element to the racing from the Historic Grand Prix Car Association is the pre '66 grid for the rear-engined cars. These were the days of sleek cigar-shaped racing cars, no aerodynamics and little in the way of overt sponsorship. These are the cars from the heyday of Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Jack Brabham and John Surtees.

Coopers make up nearly half of the grid with half a dozen T51s, most of them powered by the 2.5-litre Coventry Climax engine. But this is far from a Cooper benefit as cars from Lotus, Brabham and even Lola are firmly in the running. For Lotus fans, the spectacle of two Lotus 25s on track together is a rare sight, for the ex-Jim Clark car of Andy Middlehurst was away from racing for 40 years until late last season. This is the car that Clark raced to victory in the 1963 British Grand Prix at Silverstone. The sister car of Nick Fennell will share the grid, while David Coplowe has his ex-Jack Brabham Lotus 24 and Paul Smeeth campaigns his ex-John Surtees Lotus 18.

Bringing the Grand Prix story forward into the days of sponsorship and the 3-litre Cosworth DFV engine is the pair of races for Grand Prix Masters. This is the era when small British manufacturers like Tyrrell, Williams and Hesketh took on the might of Ferrari and Lotus and a fabulous field of over 30 cars will make a magical spectacle.

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Throughout the entry list are cars raced by famous names from Grand Prix history. The grid includes cars raced by Nigel Mansell (Lotus 87), James Hunt (Hesketh 308B), Keke Rosberg (Williams FW08), Graham Hill (Shadow DN1), Emerson Fittipaldi (McLaren M23) and Alan Jones (Surtees TS19).

The Silverstone Classic will be held over the weekend of July 23-25.

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