Moss: Fernando, Kimi are up with the best.

Sir Stirling Moss, widely regarded as the greatest driver never to win the Formula One world championship, has tipped current racers Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen to join the list of F1 greats.

Speaking to Crash.net Radio at the International Historic Motorsport Show over the course of the weekend, Moss - who finished as runner-up in the title standings for four consecutive seasons in the 1950's - reserved special praise for Alonso and Raikkonen when asked how he thought the current crop of drivers' compared to those the former Mercedes and Maserati driver competed against during an eleven year F1 career.

"I think in Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso we have two of the finest racers that there has ever been, we are very lucky to have two men of such talent around," Sir Stirling said. "I think Michael Schumacher has immense talent but I was disappointed in his performance last year because I don't think he raced as hard as he should have done. He drove very well but he didn't get in there and have a go and it's a shame because he has proven himself to be one of the best drivers of all-time - but not the best, because I reserve that for Fangio or maybe Senna.

"I think we are lucky with these two guys and lets hope for Kimi's sake that the McLaren is going to go better this season than it is at the moment because as far as we can see they aren't really competitive. Fernando is a tremendous driver regardless and I think the general standard of driving today is very good."

However Moss did concede that technological changes in Formula One made it difficult to compare drivers from different eras.

"I think the trouble is that the cars today are so much more sophisticated that it is very difficult for a driver to demonstrate their ability as much as they could in my day when the car was less important to winning a race," he said. "I think when Fangio won a race he contributed, lets say 30 per cent to the victory. When Michael Schumacher wins a race, while he might be almost as good as Fangio, I think he is only able to contribute maybe five to seven per cent because the tools he uses are so much more sophisticated."

With the season now only a matter of weeks away from kicking off in Bahrain, the final pre-season test sessions are well underway with Renault and Honda the two teams who seem to be strongest heading into the season. However Moss admitted that he felt it would be a couple of races into the year before the true order for the year would be established.

"I think Bahrain is going to pose more questions than it is going to answer," he admitted. "I think it will be very interesting and for one thing I'm interested to see whether or not Mercedes are going to use their V10 engine with restrictions on it or if they have got the V8 working properly. Cosworth have been doing really well with the new engine so it'll be interesting to see how that goes and I understand Ferrari have been suffering some overheating problems so we'll see if that is sorted.

"I just think that it will give us a lot of questions at the race. Now the talking stops and the lap-times we have seen in testing count for nothing. It'll be interesting to see who was putting on a front when they couldn't back it up.

"I'd be smart and wait for a couple of weeks [to give a prediction on who will be champion]. If you forced me to say someone now then I would say possibly Fernando. I think Jenson Button could be an outside winner because he has what we think is a very good car and Jenson has shown that he has a lot of talent. How concentrated he will be on the job, we don't know yet.

"There are a lot of questions to be answered now and there will be even more when we get to Australia, which is normally the first race of the year and is now the third, so if you come back and ask me in a couple of months then I'll give you a better answer."

The full interview with Sir Stirling is available on the Crash.net Radio archive.