John Surtees

Motorcycle racing career

John Surtees grew up in south London, the son of a motorcycle dealer. His father, Jack, was a skilled grasstrack racer and the 1948 South Eastern Centre Sidecar Champion. At 14, Surtees won his first professional race riding in the sidecar of his father’s Vincent, but officials disqualified him after learning his age. He competed in his first grasstrack race at 15.

A year later, in 1950, he became an apprentice at the Vincent factory. Surtees first caught attention in 1951 when he pushed Norton star Geoff Duke hard at the Thruxton Circuit. In 1955, Norton’s race chief Joe Craig gave him his first factory ride. That year, Surtees beat reigning champion Duke at Silverstone and Brands Hatch.

With Norton struggling financially, Surtees joined MV Agusta, where riders called him figlio del vento, or son of the wind. He won the 500cc world championship in 1956, MV Agusta’s first in the top class, helped by the FIM’s six-month suspension of defending champion Geoff Duke for backing a riders’ strike over starting money. The following season, MV Agusta’s bikes could not keep up with the Gileras, and Surtees finished third. After Gilera and Moto Guzzi left Grand Prix racing at the end of 1957, Surtees and MV Agusta dominated the two largest classes.

From 1958 through 1960, he won 32 of 39 races and became the first rider to win the Senior TT at the Isle of Man three years in a row.

Auto racing career

John Surtees was still a full-time motorcycle racer when he took an Aston Martin DBR1 sports car for a test drive in front of team manager Reg Parnell, but he stuck with two wheels for another year. At 26, he moved to cars permanently in 1960, making his Formula 1 debut for Team Lotus at the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone. He impressed immediately, placing second at his second World Championship race, the 1960 British Grand Prix, and grabbing pole position at his third, the 1960 Portuguese Grand Prix.

After racing for the Yeoman Credit Racing Team in a Cooper T53 Lowline in 1961 and the Bowmaker Racing Team in a V8 Lola Mk4 in 1962, both managed by Parnell, he joined Scuderia Ferrari in 1963 and claimed the World Championship with them in 1964. On 25 September 1965, a front upright casting broke during practice at Mosport Park Circuit in Ontario, Canada, causing a life-threatening crash in a Lola T70 sports car. Doctors set most of his fractures without surgery, partly by physically stretching his shattered body until the difference between his right and left sides was less than an inch.

In 1966, with Formula One adopting larger 3-litre engines, Surtees debuted Ferrari’s new car at the BRDC International Trophy, qualifying and finishing a close second to Jack Brabham. He led the Monaco Grand Prix before an engine failure, then won the Belgian Grand Prix after surviving a first-lap rainstorm that wiped out half the field.

After Formula One

In the 1970s, Surtees operated a motorcycle shop in West Wickham, Kent, and a Honda car dealership in Edenbridge, Kent. He stayed active in motorcycling by taking part in classic events with his collection of vintage race bikes, and also remained involved in single-seater racing, serving as chairman of A1 Team Great Britain from 2005 to 2007. His son, Henry Surtees, died on 19 July 2009 while competing in the FIA Formula 2 Championship at Brands Hatch.

The following year, Surtees established the Henry Surtees Foundation, a charity supporting victims of accidental brain injuries and promoting safety in driving and motorsport. In 1992, he was surprised by Michael Aspel on This Is Your Life. Surtees entered the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1996, was named a Grand Prix Legend by the FIM in 2003, and received an OBE in 2008 and a CBE in 2016. He earned the Segrave Trophy in 2013 for his unique achievement of world titles on two and four wheels, and an honorary Doctor of Engineering from Oxford Brookes University in 2015. The Motorsports Hall of Fame of America inducted him in 2024.

Personal life and death

Surtees married three times: to Patricia Burke in 1962 (divorced 1979), Janis Sheara in 1979 (divorced 1982), and Jane Sparrow in 1987, with whom he had three children including Henry. He died of respiratory failure on 10 March 2017 at St George's Hospital in London at age 83, and was buried next to his son Henry at St Peter and St Paul's Church in Lingfield, Surrey.