Classic Racer takes you so close you can actually smell the Castrol R. With the world's finest archive, and an editorial team who live and breathe the sport, the only way you'll get closer will be to put on your leathers.
John Surtees died on March 10, 2017. Respiratory failure took the seven-times motorcycling world champion at the age of 83. He is, so far, the only man to have won the biggest crown on both two wheels and four and the racing world globally recognised the passing of one of its greats on a cold morning in London. Mr Surtees was born inTatsfield, Surrey and grew up under the watchful eye of his father Jack. Surtees Senior had spent years as a bus driver but a passion for powered competition had filled his spare time with sidecar racing and ownership of a motorcycle shop in Croydon, two elements that were to heavily influence Surtees Junior. Whilst John’s father took to the grass on a 500cc Excelsior B14 motorcycle and sidecar…
As you will have noticed by now, this is a special issue of Classic Racer. As soon as we heard the news about John Surtees, both Malc and I agreed that CR should devote the first, serious section of this issue to the man himself. As I sit here at Classic Racer towers, in a building that Mr Surtees opened for Mortons in 2004, I am reminded of how the man who won seven motorcycling GP world titles conducted himself each time I met with him.You can watch one of those meetings in the DVD attached to this cover (digital and export readers visit: classicracer.com/185dvd/). In it you’ll see Mr Surtees relaxed and happy, talking about racing. We can all relate to our shared passion. Over the years, whether we…
John Surtees may have had his first taste of riding a motorcycle at the age of 12 on the Wallace-Blackburne speedway bike, but it wasn’t until the lofty age of 14 that he took his first step into motorcycle competition. John said: “I was 14 when I first entered a race. It was as a passenger to my father in his 1000cc Vincent sidecar outfit at Trent Park in London when his usual partner couldn’t make the race.” In a set of his father’s old leathers, the young John became adept at providing traction by shifting around the outfit, but his early taste of action was curtailed when officials discovered his age, and promptly disqualified him for being underage! He was bitten by the bug though and just before his…
To temporarily leap forward to the end of the 1955 season is to glimpse at just how hot a property John Surtees had rapidly become. With Norton’s end-of-season retirement from racing about to happen, a trio of motorcycle manufacturers were courting Surtees to ride for them; Gilera, Moto Guzzi and BMW. That 1955 season was so impactful in how the world saw John, that things would never be the same again. It started when Norton’s race boss Joe Craig gave in to Surtees’ demands for a proper racebike and gave him a 500cc Manx Norton. The decision was to be proved almost instantly prudent with John taking his factory Norton to 69 wins in the 75 British races that he took part in. Whilst the Nortons under Surtees were decimating…
He won again at Assen on his Dutch TT debut, and made it a hat-trick of victories the following week at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, to establish an unassailable lead in the 1956 500cc World Championship. Surtees won his first of seven world crowns aged just 22, despite suffering a broken arm in a German GP crash. He’d effectively been banned from defending his title by a six-month FIM suspension in return for supporting the privateer riders’ strike for reasonable start expenses at the 1955 Dutch TT. In 1957 John Surtees overcame any after-effects from the broken arm to win the season-opening Spanish GP in Barcelona. But that year’s MV Agustas were no match for the Gileras, and Surtees battled to finish third behind these in the 500cc championship, winning just…
Only the legendary Mike Hailwood with 14 wins and Giacomo Agostini with 10 (tying with the great pre-Second World War maestro Stanley Woods), were more successful in the big-bike classes. Considering the honours he was later to gain there, Surtees’ Island debut could hardly have been less auspicious. Already identified as a star of the future by virtue of his growing success as an 18-year-old short circuit rider, plans to ride in the Manx GP of 1952 fell through when, as a Vincent apprentice, he was called on to assist the factory in a series of record attempts at Montlhery in September that year. However in 1953 John and his father obtained the promise of a Manx Norton from Norton boss Gilbert Smith, and entered for the TT. Imagine John’s…
