Why John Surtees was a maverick

Forty years ago things were done differently in Formula 1, and even by the standards of the day John Surtees did them differently again. One day, in November 1978, I got a call from his secretary, asking me to visit John in St Thomas Hospital. At the time we didn't even know he was laid up.

"It's my legs," he explained, "and it goes back some years. Seems to be a combination of the injuries from the Mosport Can-Am shunt in '65, and some Avgas burns I got from the Cooper-Maserati in Mexico the year after." John being John, of course, he forebore to mention that this last was a race he had dominated.

"I've had this problem for ages, and it reached a point this summer when I couldn't drive the cars anymore, and I really missed that. So here I am..."

Although Surtees had retired as a driver at the end of 1972, concentrating thereafter on running his team, I knew he still loved to test his cars, but I couldn't help but suspect that there was a reason for the timing of his request that I visit him. Finally he said, "Well, as long as you're here, I may as well give you some news about the future."

What, I asked, was Team Surtees doing in 1979? "Nothing," he said. "That's the news. We're stopping."

Momentarily I was nonplussed. The sport, as I said, was very different then, with PR no more than a twinkle in Mark McCormack's eye, but still this seemed a casual way of announcing the end of a Formula 1 team. Was there not to be a formal statement - at the very least, a press release?

No need, John said. "What better way is there to make an announcement than to do it in Autosport?" So you want me to tell the world you're stopping? Yes.

I quickly wrote up the interview, which appeared in the following Thursday's magazine. That day, unsurprisingly, my phone rang off the hook.

Surtees's decision was reached because he had grown frustrated in his search for sponsorship: "It's now a vital factor, because Formula 1 costs have got out of hand, and frankly my holding company has always been the main sponsor of the team. I've always gone racing for pleasure and satisfaction, as well as my living, and there's no pleasure in hovering around at the back of the grid."

I could only feel sorrowful that it had ended this way, and ever after it saddened me that memories of John Surtees - a colossus of motorsport - were to some degree wedded to a failed team bearing his name.

I never saw him race a bike, but accept the testimonies of those who did, and just as he was among the very greatest on two wheels, so I know from my own experience - watching him in Ferraris, Hondas, Lolas, whatever - that so he was also on four.

Surtees was a natural, in the true sense of the word, and his love of competition, his desire to race, I put up there with Mario Andretti. To motorcycling aficionados, he will be forever synonymous with MV, but the company competed in only world championship events, and had the autocratic Count Agusta not forbidden his riding other bikes in lesser races, Surtees might never have made the switch to cars. Simply, he needed to race more than his contract allowed; it did not, however, preclude racing cars...

Mike Hawthorn, only a month before his death in a road accident, put the idea in John's head. "He said, 'Try a car - they stand up better!' When I went to John Cooper to order a Formula 2 car, John had arranged for Ken Tyrrell to be present - and that's how I ended up driving Ken's car in a Formula Junior race at Goodwood, where I finished second to Jimmy Clark. The first car race I ever went to was the first race I drove in."

Surtees's instant pace was startling, and thus he found his 1960 dance card indeed full, competing in the world championship with MV, and also driving for Lotus in F1 races that didn't clash. At the end of the year, another title won, he gave up the bikes.

John, as I said, did things differently. For 1961 he had an offer from Ferrari, which he turned down - "I thought, 'I've got to learn my trade first...'" - and a year later did the same again: "I concluded no, I'm not ready for this."

Finally, for 1963 he said yes, and quickly became one of Enzo's favourite sons, winning the world championship in '64, and staying at Maranello until midway through the '66 season when he left after a dispute with notorious team manager Eugenio Dragoni.

"I didn't want to leave," Surtees said, "and the Old Man didn't want me to, but Dragoni left me no choice."

After two largely frustrating seasons with Honda, then an appalling one with BRM, Surtees decided to set up his own team. In 1970 he won the Oulton Park Gold Cup in the neat little TS7, but in subsequent years strong results were few and far between, and financially Team Surtees was always up against it, which is where we came in.

John was never an easy man, in the sense that he had strong opinions and always spoke his mind regardless of the consequences. On many an occasion that cost him dear, but I greatly admired him for it, as also I did for his heartbroken stoicism after the death of his son Henry in 2009.

He was a good man, and a kind one. After Chris Amon's death last August he called me. "When we lost Henry you phoned me, and I was grateful," he said, simply. "I remembered how close you and Chris were, and just thought you might want to talk."

As I miss Chris, so shall I miss John, both mavericks in their different ways, both giants of racing's golden age. Surtees on a charge was an unforgettable sight.