Motorsport legend John Surtees passed away on March 10 from a respiratory condition in an English hospital. He was 83.
For those who didn’t know of Surtees, he was true racing royalty. The Brit won the GP motorcycle world championship four times?1956, ’58, ’59, and ’60? and the Formula 1 world championship for Ferrari in 1964. To this day, he is still the only person to have won world championships on two and four wheels.
Surtees raced GP motorcycles from 1952 until 1960, when he switched to cars. In just his second race he finished on the podium for Team Lotus. He joined Ferrari in 1963, which netted his first win at the German Grand Prix and the world championship the following year.
In 1965, he had a terrible crash while practicing in a Can-Am car at Mosport, which supposedly left his body four inches shorter on one side. Doctors are said to have stretched his broken bones back into shape, leaving the difference in height at just one inch. What may have been the most controversial event in Surtees’s career was Le Mans in 1966, when he wasn’t allowed by Ferrari to drive. Ferrari lost to Ford, and Surtees immediately quit the team due to the slight.

The Essence of Race Car: Surtees TS16
A Visual History of Can-Am, the Greatest Racing Series Ever
Car and Driver?s 60th Anniversary: The 1960s

Surtees was the oldest living F1 world champion. He will be missed.

This story originally appeared on Road & Track.

...