IL GRANDE JOHN

Ferrari is celebrating 70 years, but 1964 was all about the late, great John Surtees and his F1 World Championship for the Scuderia. Richard Heseltine pays homage

It couldn’t have been scripted any better. During a season of changing fortunes, a three-way title fight is settled on the last lap of the final round of the Formula 1 World Championship. There’s everything to play for, with three British challengers vying for honours, but it takes an Italian to bring matters to a head. The crown looks set to be hoisted by the leader, only for a split oil-line to hobble his car with moments to spare, dropping him to fifth place and out of the running.

And so the spoils appear to be heading to another former World Champion; the same one who has already been punted off in controversial fashion by the third protagonist’s team-mate but who has a sufficient points cushion. Just. Except this same joker in the pack then waves through his friend for a vital change of position and the team leader secures the title by one point. The end.

This may sound like a Hollywood plot, but it’s how John Surtees took the 1964 F1 World Championship. This remarkable man, who died on 10 March aged 83, had secured immortality in motor sport lore for his achievements on two wheels long before he ventured near a racing car. That he made the transition appear effortless is testimony to his greatness, but the signs were there from the start that his was an exceptional talent.

He finished runner-up in only his second ever pointspaying F1 race, the 1960 British Grand Prix, driving for Team Lotus, and started his third, in Portugal, from pole. After a further two seasons treading water with Yeoman Credit Racing and the Bowmaker Racing Team, he moved to Scuderia Ferrari in 1963 and made an instant impact.

Having already conquered the Nürburgring with MV Agusta, Il Grande John (‘Big John’ as the tifosi called him) followed through with victory in the ’63 1000km race alongside Willie Mairesse in a Ferrari 250P sports prototype. It was his maiden triumph for the Maranello squad. Shortly thereafter, he broke his F1 duck in the best way possible on the Nordschleife, finishing 1min 17.5sec ahead of a misfire-blighted Jim Clark to claim the first F1 win for the Scuderia since the Italian GP two years earlier.

It would be at the same venue 12 months later that he would claim his second victory in Formula 1. The 1964 season consisted of ten rounds, with the best six results counting towards both the drivers’ and constructors’ titles. The first half of the season had, for the most part, been divvied up between BRM’s Graham Hill and Team Lotus’ Jim Clark. The former won the Monaco GP opener, with Clark fourth as Surtees’ Ferrari was forced out with a broken gearbox. At the following round, the Dutch GP at Zandvoort, Clark won from Surtees with Hill down in third. Clark then claimed the top spot at Spa, with Hill fifth and Surtees out on only the third lap, and then Dan Gurney won for Brabham at Rouen-les-Essarts from

‘The signs were there from the start that his was an exceptional talent’