Fun With A Search Term

Stirling Moss gives Phil Hill a Lap of Honor at the Goodwood Revival.

This post title was one I gave up over a year ago because the queries just weren't no fun no more.  A curse or blessing of this blog is that people now get to it with serious queries.  May they depart more satisfied than when they arrived.  But this query is too much fun to pass up: "Was Phil Hill as fast as Sterling [sic] Moss?"

The short answer is no.

But then Phil was World Champion in 1961 and Stirling famously never was, although he won far more Grands Prix.  Stirling won sports car races on difficult circuits like the Nurburgring.  Then there was his legendary Mille Miglia win in 1955.  Phil didn't win as much on hard circuits and didn't enter the Mille Miglia.  Phil won other major endurance races, including LeMans three times.  Stirling didn't.  Phil won his last major race (Brands Hatch, in a Chaparral), and never had a serious accident.  Stirling had two, including one that ended his career.  Do you suppose they could have had a lively discussion about the relative merits of their driving talent?

At least Phil and Stirling were contemporaries.  So this query makes more sense than those bench-racing-with-beer questions like "Who was better, Juan Fangio or Michael Schumacher?"