John Surtees: The Only Man to Win World Titles on Two and Four Wheels

John Surtees was a British racing driver and motorcycle road racer who won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in 1964 with Ferrari. Before he switched to cars he had already won seven Grand Prix motorcycle world titles, four of them in the 500cc class with MV Agusta. He remains the only driver to have won world championships on both two and four wheels.

How did John Surtees start on motorcycles?

Surtees grew up around motorcycles in south London, where his father ran a motorcycle dealership. He began competing as a teenager and was working at the Vincent factory as an apprentice by 16. His first factory-backed ride came from Norton in 1955, and he soon moved to MV Agusta.

He was born on 11 February 1934 and grew up around his father's motorcycle business in south London. Jack Surtees was a capable grasstrack rider who had won the South Eastern Centre sidecar title in 1948. At the age of 14 John rode in a sidecar outfit with his father's Vincent and won, but officials disqualified the pair once they discovered his age. He entered his first race at 15 in a grasstrack event.

In 1950 he went to work for the Vincent factory as an apprentice, aged 16. The first real notice of him came in 1951, when he pushed Norton's Geoff Duke hard at Thruxton. Four years later Norton's race chief, Joe Craig, gave him his first factory-sponsored ride on the Nortons.

His Grand Prix motorcycle career ran from 1952 to 1960, a period that produced seven world titles across the 500cc and 350cc classes.

In 1955 that year he also beat the reigning world champion, Duke, at Silverstone and then again at Brands Hatch. Norton's financial position was uncertain, so he accepted an offer to race for the MV Agusta factory team, where he soon earned the nickname figlio del vento, or son of the wind.

Seven world titles on motorcycles, a Formula One championship with Ferrari, and a legacy in safety through his son's foundation.

How did Surtees become a seven-time motorcycle world champion?

Surtees won his first world title in 1956, MV Agusta's first in the senior class. The FIM had banned the defending champion, Duke, for six months after he supported a riders' strike, which helped Surtees in that season.

In 1957 the MV Agustas were no match for the Gileras, and Surtees finished third on an MV 500 Quattro. When Gilera and Moto Guzzi quit Grand Prix racing at the end of that year, MV Agusta dominated the bigger classes. Between 1958 and 1960 he won 32 of 39 races, and on the Isle of Man he became the first rider to take the Senior TT three years in succession.

In 1958 he also took the Race of the Year at Mallory Park, the first edition of that event, on an MV Agusta. In all he won seven world titles and 38 motorcycle Grands Prix, four of the titles in the 500cc class with MV Agusta.

How did Surtees's Formula One career begin?

Surtees tested an Aston Martin DBR1 sports car in front of team manager Reg Parnell while still racing motorcycles, but he stayed on two wheels until 1960. At the age of 26 he made the switch to cars full-time. His Formula One debut came at the 1960 BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone, driving for Team Lotus.

He made an immediate impact. In only his second championship race, the 1960 British Grand Prix, he finished second, and at his third race, the Portuguese Grand Prix, he took pole. He spent 1961 with Yeoman Credit Racing in a Cooper T53 Lowline, managed by Reg Parnell, and 1962 with the Bowmaker Racing Team in a V8 Lola Mk4.

Second place in only his second world championship race was a striking start for a driver who had been racing motorcycles until that season.

His move to Scuderia Ferrari in 1963 was the turning point. The 1964 crown went to him for the Italian team, and he also received the Hawthorn Memorial Trophy for his achievements that year. He is the only man to win titles on both two and four wheels.

What did the 1965 crash and the 1966 season bring?

His life was nearly ended in a crash on 25 September 1965, at Mosport Park in Ontario, while he was practising a Lola T70 sports racing car. He was practising a Lola T70 sports racing car rather than a Formula One car when a front upright casting broke. Doctors set most of his broken bones without surgery, and one side of his body finished four inches shorter than the other. He nonetheless returned to racing.

The 1966 season brought larger three-litre engines, and Surtees was leading at Monaco only weeks into the new formula, which showed how quickly the car could work. Surtees debuted Ferrari's new car at the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone, where he finished a close second to Jack Brabham. He led the Monaco Grand Prix before an engine failure, and a fortnight later he survived the first-lap rainstorm that eliminated half the field and won the Belgian Grand Prix.

Why did Surtees leave Ferrari in 1966?

Surtees left Ferrari after a bitter dispute over the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans. Ferrari could enter only two P3 prototypes because of strikes in Italy, and he was left out of the driver line-up for the works car driven by Mike Parkes and Ludovico Scarfiotti and the other driven by Jean Guichet and Lorenzo Bandini.

Team manager Eugenio Dragoni told him that he was not fully fit to drive a 24-hour race after his 1965 injuries. Surtees recalled things differently, saying he had been due to drive alongside Scarfiotti and wanted to take the first stint. Dragoni refused, and Scarfiotti started, reportedly to please Gianni Agnelli. Surtees felt the decision and the lack of support from Enzo Ferrari deeply, and he quit the team immediately.

He signed for Honda in December 1966, only months after leaving Ferrari, and his next chapter began in a different kind of team.

The row probably cost both Ferrari and Surtees the 1966 championship. Ferrari finished second to Brabham-Repco in the constructors' table, and Surtees finished second to Jack Brabham in the drivers' table. He ended the season driving for Cooper-Maserati and won its last race.

What did the Honda years and Surtees's own team achieve?

In December 1966 Surtees signed for Honda, and he finished third on the first race of the 1967 season in South Africa. The Honda RA273 then suffered a series of mechanical problems. For the Italian Grand Prix the team used the RA300, and Surtees slipstreamed Jack Brabham to win by 0.2 seconds, Honda's second Formula One victory. He finished fourth in the 1967 championship.

That same year he took part in the Rex Mays 300 at Riverside, a United States Auto Club road race that pitted the best American drivers against veteran Grand Prix drivers, including Jim Clark and Dan Gurney. He also competed in the Can-Am series in 1966 with a Lola T70, winning three of six races to take the title.

In 1970 he set up his own outfit, and for nine seasons the Surtees Racing Organisation raced in Formula 5000, Formula Two and Formula One as a constructor. He retired from driving in 1972, the year the team had its greatest success, when Mike Hailwood won the European Formula Two Championship for it. The team was disbanded at the end of 1978.

What is Surtees's legacy?

Surtees is remembered as a figure who reached the top of both motorcycling and car racing, and who is still the only person to hold world titles on two and four wheels. His seven motorcycle world titles and his 1964 Formula One championship are still the core of that reputation.

After his racing career he ran a motorcycle shop in West Wickham and a Honda dealership in Edenbridge, and he remained involved in classic motorcycle events. He was chairman of A1 Team Great Britain in the A1 Grand Prix series from 2005 to 2007.

His family's loss shaped his later work. His son Henry raced for Carlin in the FIA Formula 2 Championship, Formula Renault UK and Formula BMW UK, and he died while racing at Brands Hatch in July 2009. In 2010 Surtees founded the Henry Surtees Foundation, a charity that supports people affected by accidental brain injuries and promotes safety in driving and motorsport.

Surtees married three times. His first wife was Patricia Burke, whom he married in 1962, and that marriage ended in divorce in 1979. His third marriage, to Jane Sparrow in 1987, produced three children, including Henry. A tribute was held at the Goodwood Members Meeting on 19 March 2017, shortly after his death.

He received many honours, including inclusion in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1996 and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2016 New Year Honours. The FIM honoured him as a Grand Prix Legend in 2003, and he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2024.

Other recognition followed. He was the subject of the television programme This Is Your Life in 1992, when Michael Aspel surprised him. In 2013 he received the Segrave Trophy for 2012 in recognition of multiple world championships, and in 2015 Oxford Brookes University gave him an honorary doctorate in engineering.

Career summary