Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss OBE (17 September 1929 – 12 April 2020) was a British Formula One racing driver. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship". In a seven-year span between 1955 and 1961 Moss finished as championship runner-up four times and in third place another three times.
Moss was born in London, son of Alfred Moss, a dentist of Bray, Berkshire, and Aileen (née Craufurd). His grandfather was Jewish, from a family that changed their surname from Moses to Moss. He was brought up at Long White Cloud house on the south bank of the River Thames. His father was an amateur racing driver who had come 16th in the 1924 Indianapolis 500. Aileen Moss had also been involved in motorsport, entering prewar hillclimbs at the wheel of a Singer Nine. Stirling was a gifted horse rider as was his younger sister, Pat Moss, who became a successful rally driver in her own right and also married Swedish rally driver Erik Carlsson.
Moss was educated at several independent schools: Shrewsbury House School in Surbiton, Clewer Manor Junior School, and the linked senior school, Haileybury and Imperial Service College, located at Hertford Heath, near Hertford. He disliked school and did not attain a good academic performance. At Haileybury, he was subjected to antisemitic bullying because of his Jewish roots. He concealed the bullying from his parents and used it as "motivation to succeed". Moss received his first car, an Austin 7, from his father at the age of nine, and drove it on the fields around Long White Cloud. He purchased his own car at age 15 after he obtained a driving licence. After the Second World War, Moss was ruled exempt from doing the mandatory two-year national service for men his age because he had nephritis.

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