John Surtees – the Final Interview

Velocity is Costly director David Lancaster’s interview with one-time Vincent apprentice John Surtees would show to be one the racer’s final. To mark the discharge of unseen footage from the award-winning documentary, right here is David’s account of assembly the one man to win World Championship titles on each two and 4 wheels:  Surtees gained seven motorbike championships between 1958-60, and one F1 title, in 1964.

The modern portraits of John Surtees had been taken by Steve Learn.

There might be few to whom the Vincent-HRD marque meant a lot because it did to John Surtees, OBE. The corporate equipped his father Jack’s race bikes – and his household enterprise, promoting the machines from his South London motorbike dealership in Forest Hill. Vincents supplied John together with his first – and solely – formal employment, his early technical schooling and his first publicity to working away from dwelling. Within the mid-Fifties John Surtees constructed what he claimed to be the primary Norvin “to tackle the Gilera 500”. But earlier than starting his apprenticeship at Vincents on his seventeenth birthday on February 11, 1950, the agency loomed giant in his life additionally. A younger John would go to the manufacturing facility in Stevenage as passenger in a Vincent Rapide sidecar outfit ridden by his mom, Dorothy, to select up elements. “Vincent was a pleasant firm,” he remembers. “You went in there and it was relaxed. We might sit down, meet up with Phil Irving. It was all very pure.”

To the person who has ridden and pushed for essentially the most charismatic males and marques in motorsport – Agusta, Honda, Ferrari – Philip Vincent’s imaginative and prescient and the corporate he based in 1928 resonate to today. “At Honda, they discuss goals,” he says, over 65 years after he started work at Stevenage. “All of us have our goals. And I’ve labored with many individuals who went a great way to attaining them: Honda, Ferrari, for instance. However that small group down there in Stevenage, after they created the post-war Rapide, this should apply to them, too. There’s something particular in regards to the Vincent – it has stood the take a look at of time.”

But such reminisces are tinged with unhappiness and regrets: corresponding to his participation within the ‘irritating’ pace report runs on the banked racetrack at Montlhéry in 1952. Eight world data had been claimed, however the 100mph aimed for, over 24 hours, proved out of attain [It took a 500cc single-cylinder Velocette Venom to finally crack the 24hr / 100mph record – ed]. Surtees is especially insistent that Philip Vincent’s excessive pace crash at Grandsen airfield in 1947 “modified the course of the corporate for ever. He was a modified man.” Too many improper decisions, Surtees feels, marred the corporate’s development: improper decisions in oil in competitors, in personnel (Vincent got here to encompass himself by “sure males”) and in design and engineering. Nevertheless, nothing can detract from the brilliance of the early years. The purchasers at his father’s store, he remembers, would “mortgage their lives to personal one”, such was the machine’s attraction.

So, when it got here to John studying his commerce at a motorbike manufacturing facility, “Dad simply wouldn’t have considered me being at one other producer. No. It was Vincent HRD.” ‘Dad’, Jack Surtees, was 3 times British sidecar champion and the pre-war star of the then grass-track Manufacturers Hatch (it was solely laborious surfaced in 1950). Each his mom pre-war, after which John post-war, took on duties within the chair of Jack Surtees’ racing outfit at British circuits and in trials occasions. “A fantastic coaching, if in on the deep finish,” John says. The household ability and thirst for pace was shared by each dad and mom too. Manufacturing facility employee Ernie Allen, tool-maker modern and good friend of John’s, relates that just a few years earlier than he joined the agency, he was driving to a race circuit on his Rapide, when he was overtaken at pace by a Vincent sidecar rig. By the point Ernie arrived within the automobile park the rider was dismounting, taking off a crash helmet – to disclose that it was a younger lady on the helm, Mrs Surtees, with John and his sister clambering out of the sidecar.

Surtees’ later transition from two wheels to 4 might be traced again to this early familiarity with life within the quick lane – however particularly to his time racing together with his father. Jack Surtees’ Black Lightning spec-sidecar outfit would simply spin the again wheel and so could possibly be drifted out and in of turns at will. Surtees’ good friend, multi-motorcycle champion Mike Hailwood (who gained the Formulation 2 Championship in a Surtees automobile) mentioned essentially the most difficult a part of his transition from two to 4 wheels was getting used to the car sliding: “On a motorbike, it’s the very last thing you need to have occur.” However not solely did the teenage Surtees get used to this taking place on nearly each lap – however the pilot was his father. Therefore, a capability to drive and journey to the utmost degree in each disciplines: two and 4 wheels.

John Surtees’ surprisingly tall however slight body is clear while you meet him, even years after his a number of wins. You surprise, how did he manhandle MV fours, Ferraris, Hondas at such pace for therefore lengthy? The physicality would possibly perplex, however mild blue eyes maintain your stare. The person who constructed a profession on going quick takes his time answering questions but the single-minded focus stays. Racing is about profitable, not being in style. Surtees’ mixture of ambition, bravery, ability and pure metal is definitely the embodiment of Gilles Villeneuve’s statement that “ending second simply means you’re the first particular person to lose”. He stays the consummate racer. A go to to the gents is a ‘pit cease’. Different types of motorcycling barely detain him. Speaking of what else is perhaps included in our movie, I define others we’ve spoken to – manufacturing facility fingers, particular builders… and “some tourers”.

“Some what?’ he barks, half impatiently. “Vacationers. Who toured Europe within the ’30s, ’50s and ’60s on Vincents.” “Oh,” he says flatly, transferring on bodily and mentally. Surtees is a person who can neither conceal his enthusiasm, nor his lack of it. To today he retains the best ratio of wins in two-wheel Grand Prix historical past – 38 victories from 49 begins. Extra outstanding nonetheless is the crown of profitable the blue-ribbon class for each bikes and automobiles: seven World Championships for MV Agusta on each 350cc and 500cc, and Formulation 1 World Champion within the Ferrari 158 V8 in 1964. Such are the divisions and calls for of recent racing, it’s unlikely anybody else will obtain such success in each courses of motorsport.

Surtees has by no means been with out his critics, each out and in of Vincent circles. An off-hand remark in regards to the construct customary of traditional racers within the Eighties alienated some. “A monstrous egotist,” mentioned one proprietor I spoke to. He as soon as turned up at a Vincent Homeowners Membership assembly in Kent with the engine numbers of his Black Lightning and Gray Flash meticulously taped over. Who needs to ask John Surtees to take the tape off? Nobody. But, in deep dialog, a really human south London motorbike vendor’s son emerges – a “close to London countryman” as he as soon as described himself. There’s wit – not laugh-out-loud, however charming. Of his pioneering model of drifting the massive 500 MV Agusta he advised Australian journalists that the satisfaction this wrought was the subsequent smartest thing to intercourse. The spoken voice is what we would name “Fifties paddock posh” – slightly shy of the wealthy, national-treasure tones of his good friend Stirling Moss, however very a lot of its time.

And behind the enigmatic champion, self-knowledge was evident early on. Wanting again at his win-at-all-costs mentality, which had introduced cash, titles but in addition animosity, he advised author Gerald Donaldson that, “I used to be a bit nuts, actually.” In his 1963 autobiography Velocity he acknowledges the danger to his repute with different racers; that he was usually seen as an aloof, standoffish loner. “I’m sorry,” he wrote, “as a result of it was not that I disliked their firm, however merely that I had no real interest in the social side-lines. I couldn’t break myself of a lifelong behavior, and my machines and the racing had been the one issues which involved me.”

At his funeral three years after our interview, attended with Vincent’s grandson Philip Vincent-Day, we chatted to certainly one of John’s mechanics. “He by no means actually realized to delegate,” he advised us. Did he ever actually let go? His outstanding household historical past grew in significance to him. “Issues come again to you while you deal with a component,” he mentioned. “Reminiscences of Dad, for instance”. A coronary heart assault in 2008 could have added to this – however it’s certainly the loss of life of his son Henry only a 12 months later on the age of 18, struck by a tyre in a Formulation 2 race at Manufacturers Hatch, which wrought deeper reflection on household, a protracted life, the wins, the losses – and a melancholy I detected when speaking to him. A lot of his ultimate years had been devoted the Henry Surtees Basis, the charity he based to enhance trackside security of younger drivers. “Mum and Dad would approve of what we’re doing with the muse” he mentioned, close to the tip of our interview.   Then, pausing, the blue eyes starting to water: “And I do know Henry would approve, too.”

The Velocity is Costly Deluxe version obtain package deal options the total movie – plus 50 minutes of additional footage with John Surtees, Jay Leno, plus family and friends of Philip Vincent and Phil Irving. Head to –