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legendS
John Surtees
were exactly right, it gave us a bit
of an advantage; it caused us
problems the rest of the time.
“We tended to choose the V8
because it was likely to be the
most reliable. The flat-12 was
more powerful but suffered oil
surge in fast corners. Its higher
consumptions meant we couldn’t
run races at anywhere near full
speed. Even so, I thought we
should concentrate on it because it
had the most potential. That didn’t
happen, which was a great shame.
What Fiat might want for its
road cars was, I think, already a
consideration. When Rocchi
designed a new cylinder head for it
for the 1965 Italian GP at Monza, it
became a little jewel. We didn’t win
that race – my clutch went at the
start – but I’m sure that it had
been a flag-to-flag possibility
because we were really flying.”
At which point Surtees
crash-landed in a Lola T70 at
Mosport. A split pelvis shortened
his left side by 4.5 inches, and
ruptured kidneys almost killed
him. Enzo, who had given his
leading man permission to race for
another marque under the Team
SURTEES: “To be
told that Ferrari
makes V12 cars to
sell and that I, as
its number one,
should be in a V12
didn’t make sense”
Surtees banner, paid John’s medical
expenses, half-jokingly promised
to build him an automatico and
insisted that he move into a
grace-and-favour flat nearby. The
accident had drawn them closer.
Other team members took a less
charitable view: racing anything
other than a Ferrari was treachery.
Knives would be sharpened in
Surtees’s absence.
The man himself had more
pressing matters. After he had
been (literally) pulled straight at
St Thomas’s in London, he
pounded round the Modena test
track to begin his recovery. And
when he wasn’t doing that he was
buying furniture for the flat. He
was, it seemed, back to stay.
Re-enter the Dragoni!
Surtees bravely won his first
two ‘comeback’ races – the
non-championship Syracuse GP
32 autosport.com January 17 2013
Bellissimo part one: pressing on to second place in South African GP at East London, New Year’s Day 1965
and the Monza 1000Km sportscar
encounter – but the cracks were
reopening. Dragoni’s report laid
the Monza victory at co-driver
Parkes’s feet. Forghieri, meanwhile,
was annoyed by John’s criticism of
the 330P3 sports-prototype, and
displeased by his underwhelmed
response to the new three-litre F1
engine. Their relationship, already
unsettled by Surtees’s suggestion
that Lola’s Eric Broadley be
consulted about monocoques,
continued to cool as the engineer
viewed his longer game.
Bellissimo part two: Surtees drove with Parkes to win 1966 Monza 1000Km in Ferrari 330 P3
Surtees: “I had thought I would
come back to an entirely new
engine. What they had done
instead was simply shorten the
stroke of the sportscar V12,
complete with all its weight. I went
to the test shop and saw 290bhp.”
Having been beaten to pole
and to victory by Jack Brabham’s
Brabham-Repco at Silverstone’s
International Trophy, Surtees
had no intention of driving the
portly 312 at Monaco, where his 2.4
V6 Tasman car would be ideal…
“To be told that Ferrari makes
V12 cars to sell and that I, as its
number one, should be seen in a
V12 didn’t make sense to me,” he
says. “I should have had that race
in the bag. Instead I led until the
transmission broke, as I had
predicted it would because I was
having to row it along.” Team-mate
Lorenzo Bandini, meanwhile,
finished second (and set fastest
lap) in John’s preferred mount:
“I had nothing against Lorenzo
– I thought him a superb driver
– but at times he was just used.”
A cylinder-head and
all pics: lat archive