Signing autographs in his Ferrari at Brands Hatch in 1964.

JOHN Surtees – the only man to have won world championships at the top levels on both two and four wheels – has been awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the New Year’s Honours List to recognise his services to motor sport.

Now 81, Surtees won four 500cc champships (1956, 58, 59 and 60) and on the last three occasions also took the 350cc title (1958, 59 and 60). For those years he was virtually unbeatable on two wheels. Between the start of 1958 and the end of 1960, he won 32 out of 39 world championship rounds on both 350cc and 500cc machines, including five of the six world championship rounds at the Isle of Man TT during that period.

Swapping to four wheels at the dawn of the 1960s, he worked his way up to a place in the works Ferrari team, where he took the world championship in 1964, and he remains the only man ever to have achieved such success on both two and four wheels.

He later went on to run his own eponymous F1 team, racing in his own cars until hanging up his helmet in 1972.

After the death of Jack Brabham in 2014, Surtees is the oldest living F1 champion, and when Geoff Duke died earlier this year (2015), Surtees also became the oldest surviving motorcycle grand prix champ.

While he was awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 2008 – and the CBE is a step up from that – many are likely to see it as unfair that he’s still not ‘Sir’ John Surtees while several rivals including Stirling Moss, Jackie Stewart and Jack Brabham have all been knighted.

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