John Surtees and works-Norton Manx 500 prior to the start of a race at the International Meeting, Silverstone 9 April 1955…
Born in 1934 (11 February 1934-10 March 2017) at Tatsfield, Surrey, Surtees famously grew up working in his dad’s South London motorcycle shop. Jack Surtees was a former bus driver turned sidecar racer, it was on his father’s Vincent 1000cc sidecar-outfit that John first competed at 14.
As a school leaver at 15, John contested grass track races at Brands Hatch on a Excelsior-JAP B14 500, soon graduating to road racing, initially aboard a Triumph Tiger 70 250, at Brands in April 1950. After commencing his apprenticeship with Vincents’ Stevenage factory the same year he soon commenced racing a self-prepared Vincent Grey 500 single, taking his first win at Aberdare Park, South Wales.
In 1951 he hit the headlines after giving World Champion Geoff Duke’s factory twin-cam Norton curry on his pushrod single at Thruxton, soon establishing himself as one of Britain’s future stars, graduating from the Vincent in 1952 to a 500cc Manx Norton on which he contested his first World Championship race, finishing sixth in the Ulster GP.
In 1953 John made his Isle of Man debut having been loaned a pair of factory Nortons by race chief Joe Craig. But he got himself in Craig’s bad-book as he’d already committed to run Dr Joe Ehrlich’s works 125cc EMC two-stroke, only to crash it in practice and break his wrists after front-fork failure.
Craig cracked the shits when he couldn’t race his Nortons so John raced a pair of customer Norton 350/500s with great success in 1954. On these bikes he was 11th in the IOM 350cc Junior race and 15th in the 500cc Senior, also taking the British 250cc championship that year by winning 15 races of 17 starts on the unique R.E.G. 250 DOHC parallel-twin built by talented businessman Robert E Geeson.
As a consequence of that great season, Craig finally gave Surtees his first works Norton rides in what proved to be the British manufacturer’s final season of racing what were by then outclassed singles in 1955. John won 69 of 75 races that he started in Britain and raced regularly on the Continent, but it was on an NSU Sportmax that he recorded his first GP win, the 250cc Ulster GP at Dundrod on August 13.
With Norton’s end-of-season retirement from racing imminent, John finished the year by twice beating reigning 500cc World Champion Geoff Duke’s Gilera 500-4 at Silverstone and then Brands Hatch. Gilera, Moto Guzzi and BMW (for whom he’d ridden in the German GP on an RS500 Boxer) all chased his signature on a contract for 1956.
Instead Surtees began a five-year association with MV Agusta – after Count Domenico Agusta’s elderly mother had inspected him to decide whether she liked the cut-of-his-jib – winning his first seven races on the sonorous Italian in early-season British national races before winning the Isle of Man Senior TT, his debut World Championship Grand Prix race on the MV 500-four. And the rest, as they say, is history…click here for my article on the champion: https://primotipo.com/2014/11/30/john-surtees-world-champion-50-years-ago/
Credit…
Central Press, ridersdrivemag.com, A Herl, ttracepics.com, ‘John Surtees-World Champion’ by John Surtees and Alan Henry, J Topham-TopFoto, Rodger Kirby
Etcetera : R.E.G. 250…
Robert E Geeson built R.E.G 250cc twin-cam, two valve, parallel twin racing motorcycle shown here at Silverstone in April 1962. See here: https://cybermotorcycle.com/marques/british/reg.htm
Finito…
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