Surrey-born John Surtees has the distinction of being the only person ever to have won the Grand Prix World Championship, now the MotoGP World Championship, and the Formula One World Drivers’ Championship. However, in 1959, it was after a dominant season on two wheels that he was voted Sportsview Personality of the Year, as BBC Sports Personality of the Year was known at the time. Manchester United and England footballer Bobby Charlton finished second in the public poll, for the second year running, with the 1957 winner, swimmer Ian Black, in third.
The awards ceremony was staged at BBC Television Centre for the first time and, introduced by a fanfare of trumpets, as was customary in those days, Surtees duly accepted his trophy from host Peter Dimmock. In his acceptance speech he said, “…I would like to point out that motorcycling, although, perhaps, we get all the publicity, is also a team game and behind my effort there are the mechanics, designers and some very enthusiastic people who think very much of the sport.”
Racing for high-end Italian maufacturer, Meccanica Verghera (MV) Agusta, Surtees won all seven races in the 500cc class of the Grand Prix World Championship and all six races in the 350cc class to top the standings in both classes, as he had done in 1958. Indeed, he would do so again in 1960, for the third year running, earning the nickname ‘Figlio del Vento’ or, in English, ‘Son of the Wind’.
Thereafter, Surtees turned his attention to Formula One, making his debut, for Team Lotis, in the BRDC International Trophy, a non-championship race, at Silverstone on May 14, 1960. Four years later, driving for Scuderia Ferrari, he won the German and Italian Grands Prix and won the Formula One World Drivers’ Championship by a single point from compatriot Graham Hill, with defending champion Jim Clark completing a British 1-2-3 in the final standings.
Surtees retired from competitive driving in 1972. By that stage, he had long been a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) and was subsequently upgraded to OBE in the 2008 Birthday Honours and, again, to CBE in the 2016 New Years Homours for sevices to motorsport. He died, from respiratory failure, in March 2017, aged 83.