F1 champion John Surtees: My son's death saved so many young lives

David Cohen
20.08.09

There were no last words between father and son. As John Surtees, the former Formula 1 champion, hovered on the grid at Brands Hatch last month alongside the racing car of his 18-year-old son Henry, he gave his hand a fatherly squeeze, as he always did before a race, then hurried up to the commentary tower to watch.

John was feeling a lot less anxious than usual. “The day before,” he says, talking in the rosewood-panelled study of his Surrey home, “Henry had come third, just 1.5 seconds behind the winner. It was the first podium finish for a British driver in this year's Formula 2, and Henry had driven with such maturity that it relieved a lot of anxiety for me. I thought to myself, Henry's arrived. He's got what it takes. Brands Hatch could be his moment.”

But on the ninth lap tragedy struck. John, 75, watched a car ahead of his son, driven by Jack Clarke, spin off the track, but he did not see Clarke's tyre ricochet off a wall into Henry's path.

“I heard the commentator say Surtees is off,' followed by a video replay of the accident. He had been hit on the head by a 25kg tyre and was going at 130mph — by way of comparison, Felipe Massa was nearly killed a week later by a spring that weighed just 800g — but I couldn't grasp the gravity of the situation. Even when Henry's mechanic phoned me from the pits to say it looks bad' and I called my wife Jane, who was in the grandstand, and told her to join me at the on-track hospital, it didn't cross my mind that Henry could have been killed.”

But Henry was already brain dead. He was to be transferred to the Royal London Hospital by helicopter for a final confirmatory scan while his body was kept alive. As John and Jane made the desperately lonely one-hour drive to the Royal London, they faced not only the most dreadful moment of their lives, but also an agonising decision.

“We were told that Henry's organs could be used to save other people,” recalls John. “My first response was to say: No! I want to keep my boy whole.' But Jane, who had been a nurse, felt differently. Life's decisions. They come at you under such pressure. But I thought, OK, if it can help somebody else live on …” He pauses, his voice cracking. “Henry's heart and lungs were too damaged, but his heart valves went to young children and we have been told that his liver, kidneys and pancreas have found suitable homes, that he saved many lives.”

Earlier, when John welcomed me into his Tudor-style manor home set in 86 rolling acres of Surrey countryside, I was surprised by his smiling, twinkling eyes and struggled to reconcile them with a man who had just lost his son. But now he sits here, defenceless, translucent, weeping uncontrollably, a portrait of a broken man.

“You lose your mother, you lose your father, but this … this is so unfair … this is so hard to take. The lad did everything right. He had been racing since he was eight years old, slowly building up, and now, with his A-levels out of the way, he had said he wanted to use his gap year to focus on racing, to really give it a go. It was a freak accident, somebody else's accident, that killed him.”

John's first response was to angrily turn his back on the sport with which he'd had a passionate 60-year love affair and which has brought him fame and fortune. In 1964, he won the Formula 1 title with Ferrari, dramatically beating the legendary Jim Clark and Graham Hill on the last bend of the last race of the season. Surtees was already a seven-time world motorcycle champion and is still the only man to win world titles on both two and four wheels. In 2008, he was awarded an OBE for services to motor sport and charity following his earlier MBE.

Last weekend, as Formula 2 racing resumed at Donington Park in Derbyshire, they paid tribute to Henry Surtees by placing his car on pole position and the drivers observed a minute's silence, but John and Jane and their two daughters, Edwina, 21, and Leonora, 20, were notable absentees. Nor will he switch on the television this weekend to watch the Formula 1 European Grand Prix in Valencia. “It's still too raw for that,” he says. “But,” he adds, “I've been rethinking my initial response. I've been involved in young-driver development programmes and some of the lads really looked up to Henry. I feel that I owe it to them to help make the sport safer, to make sure that even freak accidents like Henry's don't happen again.”

Will he be calling for a review of wheel tethers (meant to ensure that wheels don't fly off after an accident) and an end to open-cockpit racing? “The last thing I'd want to come out of Henry's death is over-regulation of the sport and a crusade against risk. Compared with my day, when drivers were regularly killed and we drove death traps, the safety record of the sport is now excellent and you probably have more people dying in mountaineering accidents than on racing tracks. You can't stop young people reaching for the sky, trying to achieve their dreams. Yes, we need to look at how we can improve the fitting of wheel tethers, but closed cockpits are not on the cards; you can't eliminate the danger entirely.” Does he wish he never let Henry ride? Does he feel guilty for having inspired his son into such a dangerous sport, and perhaps even for having survived when Henry didn't?

In 1965, at the age of 31, John was involved in a horrific 120mph accident when he crashed his racing car on the Canadian Grand Prix circuit. The car flipped and dropped on top of him, crushing the base of his spine and his pelvis. For two days he hovered unconscious between life and death. It was one of three times that John looked death in the face and defied it. When he was a child during the Blitz, his home had taken a direct hit by a German bomb and he'd emerged unscathed. And six months ago, the NHS saved his life after he collapsed with a heart attack and needed four bypass operations.

“Survivor guilt?” says John slowly, as if turning the idea over in his head. “Anger? Yes. Emptiness? You have no idea. Guilt? I have no reason to feel guilt because despite what people assume, I was not the person who introduced my lad to racing.

“I married Jane when I was 53 and so by the time I had my children my motor racing career was completely over, apart from the odd bit of consulting and demo-driving, and I spent most of my time redeveloping industrial property. When Henry was eight, a friend of mine said he was off to the Buckmore Park go-karting circuit in Kent and offered to take Henry along. When he came back, Henry hurtled up to me and said: Daddy! That's what I want to do. I want to go karting.'

“So we did. We turned to motor racing and I became his mechanic, van driver, manager and sponsor all rolled into one. I can't say his mother was thrilled, but I was excited about it. My daughters were horse riders, and every weekend my wife and daughters would go one way and Henry and I would be off karting.”

By the age of nine, Henry had won his first race and would later set lap records for his age group and be selected for the British Inter-Nations team. Lewis Hamilton also started out in go-karts, and like Lewis, Henry then made the transition to racing cars, showing such talent and poise that doyens within the sport, including Formula 2's chief executive Jonathan Palmer, tipped him as a rising star potentially destined for Formula 1 and perhaps even greatness.

Ironically, although John stumped up the majority of the £240,000 that it cost for Henry to race in Formula 2, he resisted the idea that his son would necessarily graduate to Formula 1 and made sure that he followed a twin academic track, inspired by his older sisters who were pursuing degrees at Cambridge and Newcastle.

This week, John acknowledges, will be particularly tough. Henry's A-level results should arrive today — he was expecting two As and a B — but instead of celebrating with their son, it will be a painful reminder of his absence. “I took the view that few drivers are good enough to make a living out of professional racing and that we would have to see how Henry developed. Until a month before he died, I would still have said his future in racing was uncertain, but since June, with his A-levels out of the way, I saw him drive with such focus and determination that I, too, became convinced that he could have made it.”

John picks up a trophy sitting on his mantelpiece, the one Henry won for coming third the day before he died. He beams as he takes me through Henry's career in intricate detail, describing every race and bit of bad luck along with his triumphs with an unmitigated pride. His eyes beam passionately. And then, just as suddenly, the dark clouds roll in.

“In truth,” says John, “he was my best mate as well as my son. He was a golden boy who lived life to the full and who was known for his competitive spirit and his exceptionally kind-hearted personality. Now I have to regroup. Although it will take some time, and I miss Henry every day, we are a very close and resilient family, and we will find our way.”