John Surtees
John Surtees remains, decades later, the only man to have won world championships in both motorcycle grand prix racing and Formula 1 — seven titles on two wheels before a single one on four. He later founded and ran his own F1 team, and, after the death of his son Henry in a racing accident, became one of the sport's most persistent voices for improved driver safety.
John Surtees built one career most drivers would consider a lifetime's achievement before he even started his second one. Riding for MV Agusta, he won seven motorcycle world championships across the 350cc and 500cc classes through the 1950s, establishing himself as one of the finest riders of his generation. In 1960, at the peak of his motorcycle career, he switched to car racing — a transition many assumed would take years to pay off, if it ever did.
It took him four. Surtees won the 1964 Formula 1 world championship with Ferrari, becoming the only person in history to win world titles on both two wheels and four, a distinction that has stood untouched for six decades. His F1 career also included spells with Lotus, Cooper, Honda, and BRM, before he founded his own team, Surtees Racing Organisation, competing as a constructor through the 1970s on a fraction of the resources available to the sport's biggest teams.
In 2009, Surtees's son Henry, himself a rising young racer, was killed in a Formula Two accident at Brands Hatch after being struck by a loose wheel. Surtees spent much of his remaining life advocating for improved driver head and cockpit protection, campaigning that is widely seen as part of the long path toward the FIA's introduction of the halo device. He died in 2017, remembered as one of motorsport's most complete talents and, in his later years, one of its most committed safety campaigners.
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Surtees won world titles in the 350cc and 500cc motorcycle grand prix classes with MV Agusta through the 1950s, becoming one of the dominant riders of his era, before deliberately switching to car racing in 1960. His transition worked spectacularly well: within four years he had also won the Formula 1 world championship with Ferrari in 1964 — a two-wheel-to-four-wheel double that has never been repeated.
After leaving Ferrari, Surtees established Surtees Racing Organisation, building and entering his own cars in F1 and F2 through the 1970s. Running a constructor on a limited budget against factory teams was a difficult, often thankless task, but it reflected the same engineering-minded, hands-on approach that had defined his driving career — he wanted direct control over how the cars were built, not just how they were driven.
Surtees's son Henry, himself a promising young racer, was killed in a Formula Two race at Brands Hatch in 2009 when a loose wheel from another car struck his helmet. It was a devastating loss that Surtees spoke about publicly in the years that followed, channelling his grief into advocacy for improved head and cockpit protection in motorsport — an issue the sport would later act on with the introduction of the halo device.
Rather than withdrawing from the sport after his son's death, Surtees became closely involved with motorsport safety organisations and campaigning, pushing for research into better cockpit and head protection for open-wheel racing. His advocacy is widely credited as part of the long chain of pressure that eventually led to the FIA introducing the halo device years later.
Ferrari's Italian fans and press nicknamed Surtees 'Il Grande John' — Big John — reflecting both his imposing physical presence and a reputation as an uncompromising perfectionist who pushed engineers as hard as he pushed himself. He left Ferrari in 1966 after a well-documented falling out with team management, unwilling to accept what he saw as compromised engineering decisions.