Rest In Peace John Surtees.

Friday the 10th of March and, around tea time like many others I heard the sad news that the multiple 500cc, 350cc, Isle of Man TT Winner and 1964 Formula 1 World Champion, John Surtees had passed in hospital in London.

Known to many as the only man to win world championships on both two and four wheels, but he achieved so much more than that both on the track and in the garage.

Surtees won only one F1 title but early in his career took multiple 2 wheeled titles including the 350cc and 500cc (MotoGP / Moto2 equivalents) titles in the same season for three years running between 1958 and 1960 (he also took the 1957 500cc title), and seemed to make the switch to 4 wheels pretty easily. 

Joining the F1 circus as reining 500cc champion in 1960, Surtees competed in four rounds for Team Lotus in the Lotus 18 Climax scoring a second place in his second ever start. Seasons in Coopers and Lolas followed before he was signed by Ferrari for the 1963 campaign, winning the German Grand Prix en route to 4th in the championship, one year before he would become the first and so far only person to take world championships on both two and four wheels. It's also worth noting that during his world championship season he would also go on to finish 3rd overall in the Le Mans 24 hour race that season.

Another season and a bit with Ferrari - ending following victory in awful conditions in the 1966 Belgium Grand Prix (check out the John Frankenheimer's epic "Grand Prix" to see just how wet), before seeing out the season for Cooper.

While 1966 only netted a runners up spot in the F1 championship, Surtees became the inaugural Can Am champion, driving a Team Surtees run (a look to the future) Lola T70 Mk2. Surtees would also - along with other European based drivers, compete in the Tasman Series, held in New Zealand and Australia during the southern hemisphere summer months.

1967 and 1968 saw Surtees switch to Honda with 4th overall and a win in the Italian Grand Prix both in 1967 the high points, a season in the less than competitive BRM in'69 followed before, Surtees launched his own team for 1970, Initially using a Mclaren M7C before his first chassis appeared later in the season.

Surtees raced for his own team through 1970 and '71 and made one start, his final F1 appearance in 1972 at the Italian Grand Prix.

His squad would continue throughout most of the 1970s, 1978 being the teams final season. The team failed to score an F1 victory but, did score the 1972 Formula 2 title with Mike Hailwood, the driver who would conveniently give the team it's best F1 finish with a second place in the Italian Grand Prix of the same season.

There were also reasonable showings during the early years of the Formula 5000 championship and, again in the Tasman series yet F1 successes would elude the squad who, due to lack of funding, closed part way through the 1979 Aurora F1 season (a rebrand of the Formula 5000 championship.)

Surtees would again be involved with running a race team, with the British entry in the short lived A1GP series between 2005 & 2007 before mentoring his son, Henry Surtees through the lower national formulas en route to the newly rebooted FIA Formula 2 series in 2009. A series which would cruelly take him following a freak accident at Brands Hatch.

John Surtees received the MBE, OBE and CBE but never - and many from the world of motorsports on both two and four wheels lobbied for - earned a knighthood.

I was fortunate enough to meet Mr Surtees a few times, the Autosport show on more than one occasion and, in the cold windy garages at Thruxton while Henry was testing Forumla BMWs.

And he was always smiling.

Rest In Peace John Surtees.




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