John Surtees
World champion motor-cyclist and Formula 1 driver Born: February 11, 1934; Died: March 10, 2017 JOHN Surtees, who has died aged 83, was the only man to be World 500cc Motorcycling Champion and also World Formula One Motor-racing Champion.
Motorcycling was in Surtees’ blood. His father ran a motorcycle dealership in Croydon, and, as a young teenager, Surtees was a passenger in the motorcycle and sidecar which his father raced, falling foul of officialdom, who disqualified them when they discovered the passenger was still a schoolboy.
He left school and, after a short spell in his father’s business, aged 16, he joined Vincent, then one of the world’s leading motorcycle manufacturers, as an apprentice. He had already made his competitive debut as a solo rider and, aged 17, he first gave notice of his huge potential by matching the great Geoff Duke wheel-to-wheel in a race at Thruxton.
He moved up to the elite 500cc level in 1952, when still a teenager, winning the 250cc Ulster Grand Prix that season, and, as his fame spread, he was given a factory ride by Norton in 1955, beating World Champion Duke and his hitherto all-conquering Gilera at Brands Hatch and Silverstone.
But Norton were encountering financial problems and when they could not guarantee Surtees a works ride in 1956, he joined the Italian MV Augusta team. The Italian fans immediately took him to their hearts, naming him “figlio del vento” or “Son of the Wind”.
Surtees claimed his first 500cc World Championship in 1956, but, with Duke and Gilera supreme in 1957, he had to settle for third in the standings.
Gilera and Moto Guzzi pulled out of the World Championships in 1958 and Surtees reclaimed the 500cc crown, adding the 350cc title. Such was the dominance of Surtees and MV he won both 350cc and 500cc world titles in 1958, 1959 and 1960. He also became the first man to win the Isle of Man TT three years in a row in this same period. He was also the first man to average over 100mph in winning the TT.
He won 32 of 39 races during these three years – he had no motorcycling peaks to climb, so he switched to four wheels and Formula One.
Surtees signed to partner Scotland’s Jim Clark at Team Lotus, finishing second in only his second Grand Prix, the British at Silverstone, and claiming his first pole next time out, in Portugal.
He drove Coopers and Lolas over the next two seasons, finishing fourth in the 1962 World Championships, which was enough to see him back in Italy, as team leader for Ferrari in 1963. He prospered in the scarlet cars, winning the first of his six Grand Prix in the German GP, round the legendary Nurburgring.
The following year, 1964, Surtees won in Germany, and, to the delight of the Ferrari-loving “Tifosi” at Monza in the Italian Grand Prix, and was on the podium in the Dutch, British, US and Mexican Grand Prix.
His second place in Mexico allowed Surtees to pip Graham Hill for the title by one point, after one of the closest World Championships ever. Clark won five of the ten races, but it was the greater reliability of the Ferrari which allowed Surtees to eventually take the title.
In 1965 he was nearly killed when his Lola sports-racing car crashed in Mosport Park in Canada. The legacy of this crash was that for the rest of his life, the left side of his body was one inch shorter than the right.
When the three-litre F1 formula was brought in, in 1966, Surtees won the second race, the rain-affected Belgian Grand Prix, during which Jackie Stewart had his crash. However, after he was left out of the Ferrari team for Le Mans, he quit the Italian team and joined Cooper-Maserati, winning the final Grand Prix of the season in Mexico, and finishing second in the World Championship. He also won the Can-Am sports-racing championship in North America, driving a Lola, that year.
In 1967 he led the new Honda team, giving the Japanese firm their first Grand Prix win at Monza in the legendary race in which Clark lost a lap, made it up and was leading when he ran out of petrol on the final lap. Surtees’ Monza win was his sixth and last World Championship victory.
He had an unhappy year with the V12 BRM in 1969 before, in 1960, he joined Jack Brabham, Dan Gurney and Bruce McLaren in the ranks of Formula One drivers who formed and ran their own teams. Team Surtees operated for nine seasons 1970-1978, but was always under-funded and running at the back of the field. Fellow two-wheeled legend Mike Hailwood did win the European Formula 2 title for Team Surtees however. Surtees himself hung up his racing helmet in 1972. While running Team Surtees he caused something of a stir, by accepting sponsorship from Durex.
He ran a motorcycle dealership and a Honda dealership, he continued to compete in classic races on both two and four wheels and he greatly encouraged his son Henry when he started out in motor sport.
After Henry was killed in a freak accident in 2009, John Surtees became an active campaigner for road safety and driver education at his Buckmore Park Kart Circuit in Kent, where both Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button started. Through the Henry Surtees Foundation, which he formed, Surtees became an active campaigner to assist the victims of head trauma in accidents.
Surtees won many honours. He was made MBE, OBE, then CBE, with many questioning why such a unique winner never received a knighthood. He did the double of Sports Writers Association and BBC Sports Personality awards in 1959 while motor sport awarded him induction into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame and the title “Grand Prix Legend”. He was vice-president of the British Racing Drivers Club and was awarded the Segrave Trophy, presented to “the British national who accomplishes the most outstanding demonstration of the possibilities of transport by land, sea, air, or water” in 2013. Oxford Brookes University also awarded him an honorary doctorate.
He was married twice, to Patricia Burke (1962-1979) then to Jane Sparrow, whom he married in 1987. Jane survives him with daughters Leonora and Edwina, sisters to Henry.
Quiet, unassuming, slight of stature, but fiercely driven, “Big John” Surtees truly was a unique and massive driving talent.