Moss was born in London to amateur racing parents. His father Alfred had competed at the 1924 Indianapolis 500, and his mother had entered hillclimbs. Moss received his first car — an Austin 7 — from his father at age nine, driving it around the fields of the family's country house. Initially an equestrian, he used prize money from horse-riding competitions to buy a Cooper 500 in 1948, immediately demonstrating natural ability with wins at national and international Formula Three level.
Moss made his Formula One debut at the 1951 Swiss Grand Prix with HWM. After intermittent appearances over the following years, he joined Maserati in 1954 and earned his maiden podium at the Belgian Grand Prix. His signing with Mercedes in 1955 proved decisive: he took his first World Championship victory at the British Grand Prix, leading a 1-2-3-4 Mercedes finish and beating teammate Juan Manuel Fangio.
He finished runner-up in the Drivers' Championship four consecutive years — 1955 through 1958 — and third from 1959 to 1961. The 1958 season represented his closest brush with the title. Rival Mike Hawthorn faced disqualification after the Portuguese Grand Prix, but Moss intervened on his behalf before the stewards, preserving Hawthorn's six championship points. Hawthorn ultimately beat Moss by a single point, despite Moss having won four races to Hawthorn's one. A miscommunication from his pit crew — Moss misread a lap-time signal and did not push for the fastest-lap bonus point — compounded the margin.
From 1959 to 1961, Moss raced for Rob Walker's private team, taking multiple wins each season. He won the Monaco Grand Prix three times, the British Grand Prix twice, and in 1961 defeated the more powerful Ferraris of Richie Ginther, Wolfgang von Trips, and Phil Hill at Monaco in an underpowered Climax-engined Lotus — widely regarded as among the finest drives in the history of the race.
Moss was equally accomplished outside single-seaters. In endurance racing, he won the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1954 — becoming the first non-American to do so — sharing an O.S.C.A. MT4 with Bill Lloyd. He won the RAC Tourist Trophy seven times across different cars and decades. In the World Sportscar Championship he won 12 races with various manufacturers, including three consecutive 1000 km Nürburgring victories from 1958 to 1960.
His most famous single drive came at the 1955 Mille Miglia, Italy's thousand-mile road race. Co-driven by journalist Denis Jenkinson, who had prepared an exhaustive set of pace notes communicated via hand signals over engine noise, Moss completed the course in ten hours and seven minutes — a record that stood permanently, as the race was banned for safety reasons after 1957. Motor Trend later called it "The Most Epic Drive Ever."
In April 1962, Moss crashed his Lotus during the non-championship Glover Trophy at Goodwood. The accident left him in a coma for a month and temporarily paralysed on his left side. After recovering, he conducted test laps in a Lotus 19 the following year, but found himself a few tenths per lap slower than before the crash. Concluding that his instinctive command had not fully returned, he retired from professional competition. He was 32.
He remained active in historic racing events and commentating for decades afterward, serving as a colour commentator for ABC's Wide World of Sports from 1962 to 1980. He announced his final retirement from any form of racing at Le Mans in June 2011, aged 81.
Moss accumulated 16 wins, 16 pole positions, 19 fastest laps, and 24 podiums across his Formula One career — figures that remain records for a driver who never won the championship. His name became so synonymous with speed that for decades the rhetorical question "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was reportedly the standard British police phrase for speeding motorists. He was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to motor racing. In 1990 he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame. Following his death in April 2020 at the age of 90, Goodwood's Kinrara Trophy race was renamed in his honour.