Max Mosley - Racing Career

Racing Career

While Mosley was at University, his wife was given tickets to a motor race at the Silverstone circuit. The circuit is not far from Oxford, and the couple went out of curiosity. Mosley was attracted by the sport, and when his career as a barrister was bringing in sufficient money, he started racing cars himself. The sport's indifference to his background appealed to Mosley:

There was always a certain amount of trouble until I came into motor racing. And in one of the first races I ever took part in there was a list of people when they put the practice times and I heard somebody say, 'Mosley, Max Mosley, he must be some relation of Alf Mosley, the coachbuilder.' And I thought to myself, 'I've found a world where they don't know about Oswald Mosley.' And it has always been a bit like that in motor racing: nobody gives a damn.

At national level in the UK, Mosley competed in over 40 races in 1966 and 1967; he won 12 and set several class lap records. In 1968, he formed the London Racing Team in partnership with driver Chris Lambert to compete in European Formula Two, which at that time was the level of racing just below Formula One. Their cars were prepared by Frank Williams, later a Formula One team owner. It was a dangerous time to race. Early in the year, Mosley competed in the 1968 Deutschland Trophäe, the Formula Two race at Hockenheim in which double world champion Jim Clark was killed, and within two years both of Mosley's 1968 team mates were dead in racing accidents. Mosley's best result that year was an eighth place at a non-championship race at Monza. Engine builder Brian Hart says that as a driver, Mosley "might not have been particularly quick, but he was a thinking driver. He kept out of trouble and generally used his head."