5 facts about the late, great John Surtees

1. He was disqualified from his first-ever race
Surtees’ racing debut was quite remarkable. He was drafted in, won the race, and was disqualified all within a couple of hours. When Surtees was 14 years old, his father was participating in sidecar speed trials at London’s Trent Park but his swinger failed to show up. John Surtees senior did what any father would at the time and threw his son alongside him as a passenger he could trust. The two worked exceptionally well together and won the event, but were disqualified immediately when officials learnt of young John’s age. It didn’t matter: the seeds of greatness had been sown.

2. He raced bikes against Bernie Ecclestone
Surtees raced against former F1 bigwig Bernie Ecclestone in his first-ever motorcycle road race. After a handful of grass track races on his self-prepared Triumph and with varying success, it was in 1950 when Surtees entered himself into a road race meeting at Britain’s Brands Hatch and mixed it with 19-year-old Ecclestone. “I went quite well and I got to the final of the 250cc race,” Surtees recalls. “For a moment I took the lead, but the only problem was when I took the lead I wasn’t with my bike!”

3. He didn’t really want to race cars
The only reason he took up car racing was to keep Italian motorcycle marque MV Agusta happy. MV Agusta became rather upset when it learnt that Surtees was racing his beloved Norton in non-championship events while still contracted to the Italian brand. “MV told me I could only race for them, but I loved my racing so I felt this wasn’t fair,” Surtees said. “I didn’t want to break my con-tract so to keep racing I went to cars as it didn’t say I couldn’t in my contract, so I thought ‘why not?’”.

4. He was the first bloke to win three consecutive Senior TT races
Among many successes in his unrivalled motorsport career, Surtees became the first person to ever win three consecutive Senior TTs at the Isle of Man. It happened in what was the most suc-cessful era of his two-wheeled career, claiming the 1958-1960 blue-riband events, the same three years he picked up his six world titles across both the 500cc and 350cc classes. In all, Surtees competed in 15 TT races between 1954 and 1960, winning six of them and finishing all but one: the 1956 Junior TT.

5. He used tragedy to help others
Surtees’ only son, Henry, was killed in a freak accident at Brands Hatch in 2009 when he was just 18 years old. But instead of turning his back on a sport that caused his tremendous loss, it spurred Surtees into launching the Henry Surtees Foundation, an organisation which raises money to fund and support both fast and effective response for victims of motorsport crashes, as well as assisting victims of brain injury. British-based air ambulance services have been beneficiaries of the founda-tion and many lives have been saved as a result of the late champion’s dedication.