Obituary: John Surtees

John Surtees, who has died aged 83, was the only man to have won the world championship on both two wheels and four – the motorcycle grand prix and Formula One.

A naturally gifted and accomplished competitor, he might well have achieved more success in F1 had he concentrated more of his huge talent on simply driving rather than attempting to master all the facets of running a motor racing team.

Surtees, who won the 1964 world championship by a single point driving for Ferrari, was a deeply intense person who took his profession extremely seriously. Yet he was also extremely sensitive and frequently took umbrage at the slightest criticism, no matter how gentle or well-intentioned it might be.

Before switching to cars, Surtees won seven motorcycle world championships, riding for the MV Agusta team, which was based at Gallarate, northwest of Milan. Surtees loved everything about the Italian way of life, and it was no coincidence that the close relationship he forged with the autocratic Count Domenico Agusta was subsequently matched by his bond with the similarly patriarchal Enzo Ferrari.

Surtees clinched his first title on two wheels with the 1956 500cc crown. Each season from 1958 up until the end of 1960, Surtees won both the 350 and 500cc world championships as well as the junior and senior Isle of Man TTs in 1958 and 1959, plus the senior again in 1960.

A lack of contractual flexibility on Agusta’s part led Surtees to supplement his 1960 programme with a diet of car racing.

He made his car racing debut at Goodwood in April 1960 at the wheel of a Ken Tyrrell-entered formula junior Cooper-Austin, almost beating Jim Clark’s Lotus in the process.

Oporto circuit

Soon afterwards, he was approached by the Lotus chief Colin Chapman to race in F1. He immediately underscored his world class by finishing second in the British grand prix at Silverstone and took pole position for the Portuguese race over the tramlines and cobbles of the challenging Oporto street circuit.

Surtees fell out with Chapman before the end of the year and spent the next two seasons marking time, in 1961 driving Coopers for the Yeoman Credit team, which the following year became Bowmaker Racing, fielding Lola machinery. But it was not until he moved to Ferrari in 1963 that Surtees established himself as a consistent front runner, winning the German grand prix at the Nürburgring in decisive style with the V6-engined 1.5-litre Ferrari 156.

In 1964 Surtees was armed with the new V8-engined Ferrari 158, which carried him all the way to a nail-biting world championship finale at Mexico City, resolved in his favour on the final lap when Jim Clark’s Lotus blew up and Surtees slipped past his team-mate Lorenzo Bandini to take second place and win the title by a single point.

After this success, the 1965 season proved highly disappointing, yielding no more F1 victories. Worse, in late September, he was gravely injured when he crashed his own Lola T70 sports car in practice for a race at the Mosport Park circuit, near Toronto. After lingering close to death for several days, he forced the pace of a remarkable recovery from his injuries and was back behind the wheel of an F1 Ferrari by the start of 1966.

By this time Surtees’s position at Ferrari had been undermined by the machinations of the team manager, Eugenio Dragoni, and, despite winning the Belgian grand prix with the new 3-litre V12 tipo 312, he eventually left the team after a row over the driver pairings for the Le Mans 24-hour sports car race.

Honda struggles

Surtees went briefly to the Cooper-Maserati squad for the remainder of the 1966 season, then spent two largely fruitless seasons struggling with Honda, during which he won the last of his six career grand prix victories, the 1967 Italian race at Monza. A stint with BRM in 1969 left him very frustrated. After developing viral pneumonia at the end of the year, he decided to build his own F1 cars.

The early Cosworth-engined Surtees cars were promising, and the team performed well enough for Mike Hailwood – another great motorcycling talent who had made the switch from two wheels to four – to win the 1972 European Formula Two championship. Yet the team was always underfunded and finally closed its doors at the end of 1978.

Born in Tatsfield, Surrey, John, the son of Jack and Dorothy, grew up in a household deeply immersed in motorcycling. After the second World War, Jack ran a motorcycle shop in Croydon, and his eldest son quickly became a loyal disciple of the family racing cause.

Initially John partnered his father, riding in the sidecar, but his own racing career really got under way after he left Ashburton school, Croydon, and was apprenticed to the firm of Vincent Engineers in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. He acquired a single-cylinder Grey Flash bike, and on it won his first race, at the Aberdare Park circuit in south Wales, in 1950.

Motorsport history

In 1955 Surtees was invited to join the factory Norton team and clinched his reputation as one of motorcycle racing’s brightest stars with a memorable Silverstone win over Geoff Duke’s Gilera at the end of that season. Unable to persuade Nortons to continue with a works effort in 1956, he switched to the MV Agusta squad and began writing his chapters of motorsport history.

In 1962, Surtees married Patricia Burke. They divorced in 1979 and, in 1987, he married Jane Sparrow, whom he had met while he was in hospital and she was a ward sister. They had three children, Leonora, Edwina and Henry. From 1980 to 2000, Surtees developed a property business and restored cars and motorbikes. As vice-president of the British Racing Drivers’ Club he continued to encourage British involvement in international motor sport into the new century.

In 2009 Henry died at the age of 18 after being hit by a tyre in a freak accident while driving in a relaunched F2 event at Brands Hatch. John threw himself into developing the support of the Henry Surtees Foundation for accident care and training for young people. Last year he was appointed CBE.

He is survived by Jane and his daughters. – (Guardian News and Media 2017)