Sir Stirling Moss at Sebring

Pirelli and Sebring 1954 5O Years Ago, Stirling Moss, OSCA and Pirelli were Giant Killers at the Third Annual Running of the Sebring 12 Hours Sebring, FL, March 17, 2004 - An international field of drivers, including Juan Manuel Fangio, Alberto Ascari, Piero Taruffi, Luigi Villoresi and Peter Collins battled American racing stars such as Phil Hill, Carroll Shelby, Briggs Cunningham and John Fitch in the third annual running of the Sebring 12 Hours. There were 89 entries, of which 59 started the race. Briggs Cunningham was not only an entrant, but also a driver of the Cunningham-Chrysler C4R running in the Sports 8000 category. Cunningham also had a Sports 5000 entry, a Ferrari 375MM for John Fitch and a Sport 1500 entry, a Pirelli-shod OSCA MT4 shared by Bill Lloyd of the U.S.A. and racing great Stirling Moss from Great Britain. European factory entries came from Lancia, Maserati, Aston Martin and Austin-Healey, but there was also a formidable presence of privateers, both American and foreign: Ferraris, Allards, C-Type Jags, Porsches, Cunninghams and OSCAs. It was no surprise to see the Lancias set the pace. But it was a surprise to see them fall victim to brake and gearbox problems, especially after Lancia's success the previous November in the Mexican Road Race. But they had obviously underestimated the roughness of the Sebring airport surface. Bill Spear went into the lead in the Ferrari 375MM he and Phil Hill shared during the Lancia pit stops and Phil did a masterful job of holding the lead until the gearbox gave up. Meanwhile, back in the pack, the Moss/Lloyd Cunningham OSCA was circulating like clockwork! Driven primarily by Sir Stirling, they were aiming for a class win, and completely unnoticed, they moved into second place overall with five hours to go. With a little more than and hour left to race, the engine in Taruffi's Lancia D24 grenaded. Moss relentless and relying on his Pirelli tyres and four wheel drifts to slow the car because the brakes were virtually gone finally passed Taruffi's total laps and then held off the remaining Lancia D24 of Porfirio Rubirosa/GinoValenzano to take the overall win by a margin of victory of five laps. The overall win by the 1500-cc OSCA was incredible, especially considering the number of higher-powered cars among the Sebring entries and the fact that the race was run under cool dry conditions and not the rain that will frequently handicap the higher-horsepower race cars. The victory for Pirelli was its first at Sebring, followed three years later by a second win by a Maserati 450S driven by Juan Manuel Fangio and Jean Behra. Pirelli left sports cars racing in the U.S. in the late 1950s and didn't return again until 1995. That year the Pirelli-shod Andy Evans/Fermin Velez/Eric Van de Poele Ferrari 333SP occupied the top rung of the Sebring podium. This feat was duplicated the following year when the Oldsmobile R& S MK III of Wayne Taylor/Eric Van de Poele/Jim Pace took the overall 12 Hours of Sebring win. But that totally unexpected giant-killer win by the legendary Moss and in that diminutive OSCA 50 years ago will go down in the Sebring annals as perhaps the greatest upset in the history of endurance racing. And it certainly ranks among the most memorable of Pirelli's thousands of motorsport victories. Background material for this release came from Time and Two Seats, Five Decades of Long Distance Racing, The World Sport Car, Grand Touring, and Manufacturers Championships by Janos L. Wimpffen; published by Motorsports Research Group; Jack@Gerken.org