John Surtees
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John Surtees, OBE (born February 11, 1934) is a former Grand Prix motorcycle road racer and Formula One driver from England. He remains the only person to have won World Championships on both two and four wheels.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Motorcycle racing career
Born in Tatsfield, Surrey, Surtees was the son of a south London motorcycle dealer. He had his first professional outing in the sidecar of his father's Vincent, which they won. However, when race officials discovered Surtees' age, they were disqualified. He entered his first race at 15 in a grasstrack competition. In 1950, when he was 16, he joined Vincent as an apprentice; whilst with them he bought his first car, a Jowett Jupiter.[citation needed] He made his first headlines in 1951 when he gave Norton star Geoff Duke a strong challenge in an ACU race at the Thruxton Circuit.
In 1955, Norton race chief Joe Craig gave Surtees his first factory sponsored ride aboard the Nortons. He finished the year by beating reigning world champion Duke at Silverstone and then at Brands Hatch. However, with Norton in financial trouble and uncertain about their racing plans, Surtees accepted an offer to race MV Agustas.
In 1956 Surtees won the 500cc world championship. In this he was assisted by the FIM's decision to ban Geoff Duke for six months because of his support for a riders' strike for more starting money. In the 1957 season, the MV Agustas were no match for the Gileras and Surtees battled to a third place finish.
When Gilera and Moto Guzzi pulled out of Grand Prix racing at the end of 1957, Surtees and MV Agusta went on to dominate the competition in the two big classes. In 1958, 1959 and 1960, he won 32 out of 39 races and became the first man to win the Senior TT at the Isle of Man TT three years in succession.
[edit] Racing car career
In 1960, at the age of 26, Surtees switched from motorcycles to cars full time, making his Formula 1 debut racing for Lotus in the Monaco Grand Prix in Monte Carlo. He made an immediate impact with a second place finish in only his second Formula One race, at the 1960 British Grand Prix, and a pole position at his third race, the 1960 Portuguese Grand Prix. After spending the 1961 season with the Cooper racing team and the 1962 season with Reg Parnell Racing, he moved to Scuderia Ferrari in 1963 and won the World Championship for the Italian team in 1964.
On September 25, 1965, Surtees had a life-threatening accident at the Mosport Circuit (Ontario, Canada) whilst practicing a Lola Can-Am car. The front wishbone had broken. In 1966, at the start of the new 3.0 litre F1 regulations, he led the Monaco GP until his car broke down with a rear differential failure. He later won the rain-soaked Belgium GP after a duel with Jochen Rindt in the Cooper-Maserati.
Surtees parted company with Ferrari during the 1966 season after winning the Belgian Grand Prix, leaving Jack Brabham to take the Drivers' Championship. He cited excessive pressure as a factor,[citation needed] but this had occurred immediately following the Ferrari team's decision to replace him with Ludovico Scarfiotti at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans. The quarrel, between Surtees and Ferrari team chief Eugenio Dragoni, had to do with Surtees' not having recovered sufficiently from his 1965 Mosport crash to drive competitively. Surtees had a valid complaint, though, having won the 1966 1000km Monza in April and the Belgian Grand Prix just the previous weekend.[1]
In 1967, he joined Honda's Formula 1 team. He stayed with the Japanese team for 1968 before switching to BRM. Also in 1967, Surtees drove in the Rex Mays 300 at Riverside, near Los Angeles, in a United States Auto Club season ending road race. This event pitted the best American drivers of the day — normally those who had cut their teeth as professional drivers on oval dirt tracks — against veteran Formula One Grand Prix drivers, including Jim Clark and Dan Gurney.
In 1970, he formed his own race team, the Surtees Racing Organisation, and spent nine seasons competing in Formula 5000, Formula 2 and Formula 1 as a constructor. He retired from competition in 1972, the same year the team had their greatest success when Mike Hailwood won the European Formula 2 Championship. The team was finally disbanded at the end of 1978.
[edit] After Formula One
In 1996, he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame. The FIM honored him as a Grand Prix "Legend" in 2003. He continues his involvement in motorcycling, participating in classic bike events with bikes from his stable of vintage racing machines. He also remains involved in single-seater racing cars and currently holds the position of chairman of A1 Team Great Britain, in the A1 Grand Prix racing series. His son, Henry, currently competes in the Formula BMW UK series for Carlin Motorsport.[2] In 2008, he was awarded an OBE. [3]
[edit] Motorcycle Grand Prix Statistics
| Position | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| Points | 8 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Year | Class | Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Points | Rank | Wins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1952 | 500cc | Norton | SWI |
IOM |
NED |
BEL |
W.GER |
ULS 1 |
NAT |
ESP |
1 | 18th | 0 |
| 1955 | 250cc | NSU | FRA |
IOM |
W.GER |
BEL |
NED |
ULS 8 |
NAT |
8 | 7th | 1 | |
| 350cc | Norton | IOM 3 |
W.GER 4 |
BEL |
NED |
ULS 4 |
NAT |
11 | 6th | 0 | |||
| 1956 | 350cc | MV Agusta | IOM |
NED 6 |
BEL 8 |
W.GER |
ULS |
NAT |
14 | 4th | 1 | ||
| 500cc | MV Agusta | IOM 8 |
NED 8 |
BEL 8 |
W.GER |
ULS |
NAT |
24 | 1st | 3 | |||
| 1957 | 350cc | MV Agusta | W.GER |
IOM 3 |
NED |
BEL |
ULS |
NAT |
3 | 10th | 0 | ||
| 500cc | MV Agusta | W.GER |
IOM 6 |
NED 8 |
BEL |
ULS |
NAT 3 |
17 | 3rd | 1 | |||
| 1958 | 350cc | MV Agusta | IOM 8 |
NED 8 |
BEL 8 |
W.GER 8 |
SWE |
ULS 8 |
NAT 8 |
48 | 1st | 6 | |
| 500cc | MV Agusta | IOM 8 |
NED 8 |
BEL 8 |
W.GER 8 |
SWE |
ULS 8 |
NAT 8 |
48 | 1st | 6 | ||
| 1959 | 350cc | MV Agusta | FRA 8 |
IOM 8 |
W.GER 8 |
SWE 8 |
ULS 8 |
NAT 8 |
48 | 1st | 6 | ||
| 500cc | MV Agusta | FRA 8 |
IOM 8 |
W.GER 8 |
NED 8 |
BEL 8 |
ULS 8 |
NAT 8 |
56 | 1st | 7 | ||
| 1960 | 350cc | MV Agusta | FRA 4 |
IOM 6 |
NED 8 |
ULS 8 |
NAT |
26 | 1st | 2 | |||
| 500cc | MV Agusta | FRA 8 |
IOM 8 |
NED |
BEL 8 |
W.GER 8 |
ULS 6 |
NAT 8 |
46 | 1st | 5 |
[edit] Complete World Championship Formula One results
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; Races in italics indicate fastest lap)
[edit] References
- 50 Years Of Moto Grand Prix (1st edition). Hazelton Publishing Ltd, 1999. ISBN 1-874557-83-7
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] External links
- Biography from GrandPrix.com
- Biography from F1db.com
- John Surtees statistics
- Sky Sport video documentary on John Surtees
| Sporting positions | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Geoff Duke |
500cc Motorcycle World Champion 1956 |
Succeeded by Libero Liberati |
| Preceded by Libero Liberati |
500cc Motorcycle World Champion 1958-1960 |
Succeeded by Gary Hocking |
| Preceded by Jim Clark |
Formula One World Champion 1964 |
Succeeded by Jim Clark |
| Preceded by Inaugural |
Can-Am Champion 1966 |
Succeeded by Bruce McLaren |
| Awards | ||
| Preceded by Ian Black |
BBC Sports Personality of the Year 1959 |
Succeeded by David Broome |
| Preceded by Jim Clark |
Hawthorn Memorial Trophy 1964 |
Succeeded by Jim Clark |
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