THE ISLAND LIFE

With six TT race victories and a total of 13 replicas to his credit, Surtees outscored other such legendary figures on The Island as Geoff Duke (five and nine respectively) and Jim Redman with five and 17, including several in the lightweight classes whic

Only the legendary Mike Hailwood with 14 wins and Giacomo Agostini with 10 (tying with the great pre-second World War maestro Stanley Woods), were more successful in the big-bike classes. Considering the honours he was later to gain there, Surtees’ Island debut could hardly have been less auspicious. Already identified as a star of the future by virtue of his growing success as an 18-year-old short circuit rider, plans to ride in the Manx GP of 1952 fell through when, as a Vincent apprentice, he was called on to assist the factory in a series of record attempts at Montlhery in September that year. However in 1953 John and his father obtained the promise of a Manx Norton from Norton boss Gilbert Smith, and entered for the TT. Imagine John’s astonishment when legendary Norton race boss Joe Craig then came up with a brace of Norton factory machines, on which to make his Island debut! “To say I was both astonished and overawed would be an understatement,” recalls John. “Here I was, a lad of 19, still an apprentice, with a history of some success on short circuits but absolutely no experience of the TT course, being entrusted with two of his pet machines by the most famous man in British racing. I was absolutely terrified at the responsibility.” In the end though, fate interceded, for Surtees had also agreed to ride a 125cc EMC two-stroke for Dr Joe Ehrlich in the Ultra-lightweight race, before the offer of the works Nortons came along. “I reasoned that any extra mileage I could get in would be worthwhile,” says John, “and though Joe Craig was very unhappy about my riding the EMC, I’d promised Ehrlich and felt I had to see it through. Unfortunately, the front forks collapsed on the long left-hander after Ballaugh Bridge, called Ballacrye, and I ended up on my ear with a broken left wrist. I was so disappointed and upset I took the next boat home. It took nearly a year for Joe Craig to bring himself to speak to me again, he was so angry.” That next year though, in 1954, things went much better when, armed with a pair of production Manx Nortons, John finished 11th and 16th in his first TTS, gaining replicas in each. This and his increasing domination of the short circuit scene led to a renewed invitation to join the works Norton team for the 1955 season, albeit armed only with ‘super-manxes’ after the withdrawal of the factory team from Grand Prix racing. Fourth in the Junior, John was also well-placed in the Senior TT when he, ahem, ran out of petrol at

Creg-ny-baa on the last lap, and had to push in. Even the demanding Mr Craig was not above making the odd mistake… Now began the phase of the Surtees bike racing career for which he is most famous – his five-year association with the legendary MV Agusta team controlled by the equally legendary Count Domenico Agusta. MVmounted, John Surtees scored his first Isle of Man victory in the 1956 Senior TT, after being excluded in the Junior when he yet again ran out of petrol on the last lap and had to borrow a milk bottle full from a spectator on the Mountain to get home. “About the worst thing that ever happened to me in the Island apart from the EMC incident was running out of fuel twice,” says John ruefully. “I only ever fell off one other time, when I came round Sarah’s Cottage in practice to find a cow loose in the road, and wrote off my race bike against her. I was unhurt, the cow pretty much so, too, but the MV was a basket case. In fact, I never ever fell off in a race over there, and just as well, too.” Instead, Surtees won most of them: fourth and second behind the Gileras in 1957, he achieved the double-double for the first time ever in the two succeeding years, winning the Junior and Senior races in each. It might have been a remarkable hattrick of double wins but for a series of bike problems in the 1960 Junior, leaving him to struggle home second behind his good friend and MV team-mate John Hartle, while winning the Senior TT later in the week. At the end of that year, Surtees moved on to the world of Formula 1 car racing, and success on four wheels. Riding the TT circuit is like speaking a foreign language: once you learn how to do so, you never really forget. A measure of Surtees’ ability in the IOM came in the inaugural TT Cavalcade in the Iom’s millennium year of 1979, when after a 19-year absence from the Island he lapped at over 96mph from a standing start on a 500cc MV Agusta, without moreover having ridden a racing bike in public for almost that long. What kind of approach enabled him to perform such amazing feats on the Mountain Circuit? “Well, when I first went, there was quite a distinct division in my day, between Grand Prix riders and short circuit competitors and a certain mystique was conferred on

the art of riding the TT circuit by people who pretended it was impossible to do well there unless you’d served your apprenticeship at the GPS. Riding at Brands Hatch and Crystal Palace and Silverstone was considered a quite inadequate upbringing for the rigours of the TT, which required specialist skills, or so I was told. “In fact, this was poppycock, as people like John Hartle and myself subsequently proved. The important thing about the Mountain Course is its length – there’s nothing to stop you riding it like a short circuit, but if you do you won’t win, just wear yourself and the bike out. But that’s not to say that a short circuit rider can’t change his approach, and use his skill and ability to attack the Island in the correct fashion. The most vital ingredient in racing at the TT is rhythm – getting into an established rhythm and sticking to it. This is totally lacking in short circuit racing, where at least half the time you’re engaged in ‘spoiling’ – trying to obstruct the man behind, spoil his overtaking line, outbrake him into corners, and so on. That’s why short circuit races are often won at much slower speeds than if you’d been riding round on your own, whereas on the Island, with the staggered starting intervals, and the length of the circuit, you’re engaged in a much purer form of racing – it’s just you against the clock. “The length is also important in that at the TT there are long sections of road where if you make even a small mistake, you can still be paying for it five miles later, in terms of an extra 200 revs you haven’t attained, and so on. You must think much further ahead than on a shorter course.” So if the IOM does need a different approach, did Surtees have any difficulty in adapting his riding style to suit the circuit’s demands? “People like John Hartle and myself tended to bring a kind of short circuit-type aggressiveness to the Island in terms of attacking some of the corners, more than perhaps the previous generation of riders like Geoff Duke had done. Of course, we were partly also helped by tyre developments – the rubber war between Avon and Dunlop was just beginning to hot up, which enabled us to scratch perhaps a little more consistently, rather than just make the occasional big effort. I’ve always contended it’s much better to make a 98% effort for the whole race, rather than ride at 101% for short bits and if you and the bike survive that, then stroke it at 95% for others. I think Mike Hailwood proved this particularly when he made his comeback in 1978 and won the race on a bike that was far from being the fastest in the field, partly because he was a master at settling into a rhythm and then keeping it up the whole way through the race.” So how did John Surtees learn thett Course in the first place? “Simply by driving round and round in a car – not on a road bike, it was important not to get into the subconscious mentality of having to keep on the left-hand side of the white line if you were riding a bike. Doing it in the car was different enough, and anyway I quite often preferred someone else to drive while I just looked around at everything. I buzzed down Bray Hill many hundred times more in my mind than I ever did in real life!” A good start was something which Surtees always valued highly: “I was always quite well known for my starting style, because I used to sit sidesaddle on the bike until it was well under way, then cross my leg over and at once change up into second gear. I didn’t run and bump in the normal way, but would take about three steps and then sit on the bike, relying on it to start first time. I always thought other riders wasted a lot of time getting aboard the bike, instead of getting away as fast as possible – there was time to be picked up there.”