FROME’S link to motor racing goes back far beyond Jenson Button.
Motor racing legend Sir Stirling Moss, who died this week aged 90, had much of his early success with a motor company based in Corsley.
Stirling Moss raced with The Rob Walker Racing Team which was run from a garage in the village, opposite the Royal Oak.
The team became Formula One’s most successful private teams in history and was the first ever private team to win a Formula One Grand Prix. Uniquely, the team didn’t produce its own F1 cars, but purchased them from companies like Lotus, Cooper and Connaught and adapted them to race in motor sport.
Moss’s first victory for Walker came in the 1958 Argentine grand prix, driving a Cooper T43 car and sporting an eye patch following a mishap with his wife!
It was the first time a rear-engined car had won a race in the world championship. Rob Walker Racing went on to win nine grand prix races between 1958 and 1968.
Moss raced from 1948 to 1962, winning 16 Formula One Grands Prix and was the English driver with the most Formula One victories until 1991 when Nigel Mansell overtook him.
He raced with Walker’s team until a terrible accident at Goodwood on Easter Monday 1962 which ended his career.
Local motor racing enthusiast Arthur Jones told Frome Times, “He was an amazing driver and most people believe he was the best driver never to win the world championship.
“I was at Goodwood on the day he crashed; he was in the lead but didn’t come round for the next lap so we knew something had happened. He was badly injured and never raced again.
“Rob Walker’s team was based at a garage in Corsley, opposite the Royal Oak and Stirling Moss drove for him for a number of years. You can still see the garage today.”
